


The Pilgrimage

by Greekhoop



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Gift Fic, Historical, M/M, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-13 10:41:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 27,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14747315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greekhoop/pseuds/Greekhoop
Summary: Santino prepares Armand to take over the Paris coven. Together they embark on a journey to a sacred site, and into the past.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Salai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salai/gifts).



> This is the spiritual sequel to a much older fic of mine, The Bloudy Tenant. While they use the same original backstory for Santino, you totally don't need to read that one to know what's happening here.
> 
> Lovely reader Salai proposed a fic exchange with this pairing, and so I'm delivering my part. It got a bit out of hand, so sorry in advance, Salai!

_Rome  
February, 1634_

News from the world above was slow to reach them in the catacombs. The devils of Santino’s coven were ever behind the times, ever embarrassingly out of the cultural loop. The machinations of men might be enough to entice their heretical brethren who lived above ground to prance and pontificate like the empty-headed, vacant-hearted fools they were, but Santino had long ago determined that there was no place in his flock for such distractions.

The location shielded them from the worst of it. The catacombs themselves were Santino’s personal monastery, a place of high-walled, silent, and sustained contemplation of the profane. But the city, too, had been a deliberate choice on his part. Rome, the most drearily conservative of Europe’s states: change went out in the form of Papal decree, but very little that was new or novel flowed back in.

All was arranged just how Santino wanted it. All was for the good of the lost goats who had come to compose his coven.

But try as he might, he could not shelter them from everything. They had been hearing the whispers for some time now, of the device in Gutenberg that copied the words of man precisely, the refracting glass that allowed men to see beyond the stars, the magnifying lens from The Hague that allowed the gaze to turn towards the microscopic world.

He had wanted to remain their steady, dark star forever. An unmoving light around which any who were lost might find their way.

It was a beautiful dream, but one that was not meant to be. Santino knew as well as any of their kind that when the world began to move they must move along with it, bracing themselves against the bone-shaking tremors of change and doing their best to ride out the shockwave.

For the good of his flock, then, he rose early on the night of the Feast of St. Valentine and left the catacombs by a secret exit. There was still a little blue glow left in the sky when he emerged from the rock and started toward the city.

He met a group of revelers on the road, pairs of one young man and one young maid each, bent close and whispering those private poetries such as young couples did on St. Valentine’s Eve, on a lonely road after dusk.

Santino heard every word, in the way that all of his kind, with their heightened senses and sensibilities were privy to the cloying secrets of man. Each stray thought that came through a little too loudly, every whisper that was meant to pass into obscurity, preserved forever in his undying mind.

It was one of the many curses the Dark Master, in his infinite wisdom, had seen fit to burden him with.

A couple near the back of the group flagged slightly. It was the boy that Santino had his eye on; he was no more than sixteen, tall and trim-hipped. More awkward than handsome - though evidently not yet apprised of such unflattering truths - he was dressed in a close-fitting doublet with a wide collar, snug breeches with the none-too-subtle bulge of wadded fabric at the apex of the thighs, high black boots polished to a mirror shine.

All in all, a perfectly ridiculous display, with no more substance to it than the figures painted on the wall by a shadow lantern. Still, the clothes looked as if they would fit, and Santino knew that if he was going to once more brave the material world, he would have to look the part.

The young man hopped over the ditch that ran along the side of the road, then reached a hand back for his lady companion. She lifted her skirt full to the knee and then jumped after him. She landed as light as a lamb, but he was drunk and graceless as a colt. He tripped over his own feet in his rush to steady her, and pulled her down after him.

They landed on the grass in an explosion of skirts and squealing giggles, half-rolling down the incline leading away from the road.

Santino had seen more than enough to last him another century at least. He stepped forward, out of the shadows, making no sound, seeming to not even touch the earth with the soles of his feet as he darted forward.

In less than a second, he was standing over the couple. He snatched the girl from her seat astride the boy’s hips, and with a flick of his wrist he separated her head from her body. A gout of blood spat from the ragged stump of her throat and was lost against the dark sky. Santino managed to keep clear of the worst of the mess. 

Before the young man could react, Santino had tossed the corpse aside and leapt on him like a beast. He sank his fangs into the tender white column of his neck, felt the first spray of hot arterial blood strike the back of his throat. In an instant, his hands were at work between their pressed bodies, undoing the hooks and ties that secured the young man’s starched and stiff clothing.

They were certainly having fun, but it wouldn’t do for Santino to forget why he had come.

He finished tearing open the young man’s throat, drinking him so dry that he could see the blue map of his desiccated veins beneath his pale taut flesh. Upon reflection, it could have been done more cleanly. But no human had ever died prettily or well, and Santino had seen many corpses in his life but not a single one that had looked like it was sleeping. 

He could still feel blood burning the soft tissues of his mucous membranes like the heat off a spiced dish of food that instantly set Santino’s head to spinning. The young man, it seemed, had taken quite a bit of liquid courage before mounting a siege on his paramour. More than enough to go to the head of a demon who had not cared for alcohol even when he had been among the living.

Perhaps it would help the bitter work to come go down more easily, Santino thought to comfort himself, as he shed his ragged clothing and changed into the young man’s dandyish attire. At first it hung loose off his bony frame, but as the blood worked its way through his system, he felt his sallow skin grow firm, slack muscles turn supple.

Ropes of lank hair lifted themselves away from his face, arranging themselves into lustrous curls, parted on one side and raked back from his brow. His skin repelled the filth of the catacombs so that it ran off him like water. Even his ragged nails reshaped themselves, spitting out the accumulation of grease that had collected in their beds.

Santino straightened up, shaking out his hair before he set the capotain hat atop his head. He felt the locks slithering beneath the brim like irritated snakes, pushing themselves back into their former coiffure, denying his attempts to return them to chaos.

He fit his hands around his waist at its narrowest point, and twisted his head around, admiring the lines of his legs in the snug breeches. It looked good, he had to admit. Vanity, too, was a sin, though one he did not often indulge in.

As he straightened himself out, Santino realized that he was being watched. He had been aware of it on some level for a while now, but dismissed the intrusion because he knew that it carried with it no implicit threat.

Swiping at a spot of blood on the top of one of his high boots, he called back, “You might as well come out.”

A black shape detached itself from the shadow of one of the trees. For an instant, it seemed to hold no more substance than a wisp of smoke curling away from the spent edge of a match, but then, gradually, distinctive features resolved out of the darkness.

“I wasn’t spying,” Armand said sullenly. His amber eyes peered out through the limp slats of auburn hair that hung across his face, not once dropping away or attempting to escape Santino’s gaze. He pursed his bloodless lips. “You look strange like that, Master. Almost handsome.”

Santino felt his face grow warm, his cheeks flushing with a sudden unwelcome rush of blood. 

“You know nothing about it,” he said, lifting his chin imperiously, knowing even as he did so that the contemptuous gesture did nothing to hide the truth of the situation, the deepening blush that colored his cheeks. “The sacrifices I must make for you ungrateful lot.”

Armand’s expression did not change. “It must be very difficult for you,” he said. It was impossible to tell whether his tone was one of genuine sympathy or bitter sarcasm, and Santino could not say which would have stung him more.

“I suppose you think you’ve uncovered a great secret,” he said, taking great care to sound as if the proposition did not bother him in the slightest.

“I would not presume, Master.” Armand’s eyes were still fixed on him; he seemed not to have blinked even once in the past minute. It reminded Santino for all the world of a predator crouched in the grass, tracking the movements of its prey. 

Armand may still have looked the part of the lost orphan, may still have played the role of the obedient devotee, but he had come into his own. Without meaning to, perhaps without even being aware that it was happening, he had become an unknown quantity within the static ecosystem of their coven. There had always been the chance that he would grow to be a genuine threat, and is seemed now, as he thrust his lovely, lethal gaze like a silver blade, that the day of reckoning would come very soon now, if it had not already.

Santino could not have been prouder.

“Of course,” Armand went on when Santino did not respond right away. “We both know that the others would not understand why you are permitted the world of men and they are not.”

“They lack imagination,” Santino said. “And they require a firm hand.”

“I won’t tell them that I saw you here,” Armand said. “Though I’m sure you could handle it, I would not want any harm to come to you.”

At that, Santino laughed. Armand drew away from the sound as if offended, and even Santino had to admit that it was rather rusty and unpleasant with disuse.

“I ought to put you over my knee,” he said. “To think that you would threaten me like that.”

“I meant no threat, Master.” Armand was trying to back out of it now. His eyes were still fixed and unblinking, but Santino saw them dart subtly to the side, escaping his gaze.

“No matter,” Santino said. “Stretch your leathery wings all you like, beat them against the sides of your cage. But know that there is much worse out there than me, and I do not doubt that you’ll discover it all in time.”

He turned away, taking care to sweep his new short cloak into place around his shoulders. Starting back the way he had come, he had made it nearly to the road before he realized that Armand had not moved.

“Well?” he called back. “Are you coming? Be quick about it. We haven’t got all night.”

He kept walking, as if it mattered very little to him either way. But he was relieved when a moment later he heard the sound of soft footfalls on the grass, moving with swift certainty after him.


	2. Chapter 2

The moon was high by the time they reached the city walls. Armand had followed him at a distance for some time now, but as Santino took to the rooftops where he was more comfortable, the boy appeared at his side.

“Master, I thank you for the lesson, but I’m afraid I may not be ready for it. My humble heart cannot comprehend what it is you wish to teach me.”

“Stop it,” Santino said. Though Armand had deigned to disguise the sarcasm in his tone somewhat, he really was overdoing it. “You know you can be yourself with me, Armand. Have I ever denied you that?”

Armand’s eyes cut upward at him, lashing his face like the tail of a whip. Santino felt his heart flutter in his breast, still freshly engorged with blood and determined to announce that fact to the world.

“I don’t know, Master,” Armand said. “There’s much I suspect I misremember about our time together.”

“Perhaps we have been less than candid in the past. But not now.” Santino tapped his booted toe against the roof of house on which they stood. “Go down into the rooms. Drink what you need. Find something decent to wear. I’ll wait for you here.” 

Armand walked to the edge of the roof, and there he paused. Santino watched his turned back, neither daring nor desiring to read his mind. In truth, he didn’t need power to know what he was thinking. 

All these long centuries, Armand had nursed his memories of his life before Santino had shown him the truth. He could better recall the trappings of the time than the substance. Even now, he longed more for the fine clothes and pretty baubles than for any sense of self he had achieved while living in sin as a mortal. In his mind, those things had become talismans inextricably linked to what he had lost.

Santino understood all this, perhaps even better than Armand himself did, and so he knew why he hesitated before slipping over the edge of the roof and out of sight.

He was afraid that, after tonight, things would just go back to the way they were. But he needn’t have worried about that.

A minute passed, then two. There was almost no sound at all from within, but Santino was well aware of Armand moving through the rooms under his feet. A moment later, he emerged once more, hopping lightly from a second-story balcony and up onto the roof.

He’d fed, and well, though Santino did not think that he had killed. Instead, he had moved swiftly and steadily between the sleeping inhabitants of the house, taking only a mouthful from each. An angel of inconvenience rather than death.

His hands were still busy doing up the laces on his doublet, no longer accustomed to the unfamiliar ribbons and clasps. Santino came over to help him, and as he straightened his collar, Armand looked up at him.

His face was like a wan and pallid night-blooming flower, opening its petals to the moon. Before Santino’s eyes, his skin reddened and his pale lips grew flush and red. His cheeks fleshed out, a cadaverous memento mori, painted over with the rounded features of a cherub.

“I had forgotten,” Santino said.

“What?”

“How truly lovely you are.”

“You would, wouldn’t you?” Armand shook his long hair back. It had not arranged itself as obligingly as Santino’s had, and though it no longer hung in his face it remained wild and uncombed. “Take a good look.”

He turned his back and took a few steps, his hair trailing behind him like a battered banner.

“You are beautiful,” Santino called after him. “And I never took that from you. I only asked you to hide it a while from vulgar eyes, and see what came of it.”

“And what did?” Armand snapped back.

“You tell me.” Santino followed him. Though he was loathe to admit it, he got quite the thrill from being ignored. “It is one of the burdens our kind must bear, to be beautiful without effort, desirable without direction.”

“The ancient scholars thought beauty was a mark of favor from the gods. To hide it was a profanity.”

Santino shrugged. “What do you think?”

Armand didn’t answer right away, instead he only tossed his head and said, “I’d like to know what you know about it. The peasant class is hardly known for its scholarship. Should I believe that you are well acquainted with such books? I doubt you could even read them.”

Santino’s eyebrows went up. He had to admit, he hadn’t expected an attack on that particular flank, and for a long moment he was struck speechless, not even offended, but wondering how he might possibly answer. The longer the words hung unaddressed in the air between them, the more absurd they seemed, until they struck him as so ridiculous that Santino couldn’t help but laugh at them.

As he raised a hand to his mouth to stifle his amusement, he saw Armand look away. Though his face was turned, Santino could see that the tops of his ears were turning red.

“Forgive me, Master,” he muttered, embarrassed. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“I want to know where you got such a ridiculous notion.”

“I had heard of your humble origins,” Armand said. “I assumed… I don’t know.”

“Heard from whom?”

All at once, Armand’s jaw went stubbornly rigid. His shoulders tensed as if in anticipation of a blow. “I don’t remember,” he said, barely a whisper.

“It was Marius, then,” Santino concluded with a roll of his eyes. The mention of the name pricked at him, an unsightly blemish on what had, until now, been a lovely evening. It was Armand’s reaction that surprised him; before Santino’s eyes, his entire body convulsed, as if torn between the desire to leap from edge of the roof and flee or to fling himself at Santino until one of them had been torn to pieces.

In the end, he did not move at all. He merely stood there, his blazing eyes downcast and his hands clenched at his side, knotted into fists so tight that fresh blood seeped from between his white knuckles.

“You still love him,” Santino said, without accusation.

“No,” Armand replied. “It’s not that at all. I hate him.”

“You don’t need to say that for my sake. My heart would hardly be broken.”

Armand drew a deep breath. Slowly, his fists unclenched, and he lifted one hand to scrub at his eyes sullenly, transformed in an instant from the very image of a young martyr to that of a tired and bewildered child trying to hold back tears.

“It’s the truth,” he said. “For so long, it was you that I loathed, Master. But you can only ever be who you are. He was the one who lied to me, by implication or omission. Letting me believe that I knew what kind of man he was. He never came for me, though. Not in all those long years.”

Armand looked up at him without recrimination. “He never came to kill you.”

Santino felt his lips twisting into a strange configuration. It took him a moment to place it as a smile. “No, he didn’t. Though I admit, I felt it a little touch and go for a while in there. But they never come, Armand. No one ever comes when you need them.”

He was aware that Armand was watching him closely, as if probing the words for a hidden meaning. There was nothing for him to find; only the flat and unembellished truth as Santino had come to know it.

“Marius told me things about you,” he said at last. “Perhaps they weren’t really true, but I believed them. He always spoke so highly of his long and storied life. But you never talk about the past.”

“I know,” Santino conceded. “But if I did it would only complicate the narrative. They all look to me for answers, and the official story is best kept simple.”

"You can tell me, though.” 

Armand protruded his lower lip into a pout. Santino supposed it had gotten him his way many times in the past, and to his credit it almost worked now.

“Maybe I can,” Santino said. “But not now. Back that way lies the dark and unremitting past. For now, at least, there is nothing there for us. We have to move forward.”

“Fine,” Armand replied. “Just try not to embarrass me if we meet some decent people for once.”

Without waiting to see if Santino followed, he hopped lightly to the next roof, bounding ahead, towards the lights that still burned near the center of the city.


	3. Chapter 3

_Catacombs of St. Sebastian  
August, 1540_

For weeks now, Santino had been listening to the stream of consciousness that issued forth from their coven’s latest member. The newly-christened Armand woke each night in rage and despair, and kept up a sustained and overpowering cacophony in his thoughts until the moment the sun overtook him and gave the rest of them a few minutes of blissful peace and quiet. 

Even the dullest and least-gifted of Santino’s flock had started to avoid him. Armand’s thoughts were singularly loud, the sustained tantrum of a child determined to hold his breath until he gets what he wants.

Santino supposed even the imitable Armand would wear himself out eventually, but when he rose one evening and found that the passages and cubicula of the catacombs were silent, he realized he was worried.

His first thought was that Armand was already gone, that he’d somehow slipped out in the moments before dawn and walked into the sun. There had been no such inclination in his thoughts the evening before, but it was not inconceivable that he might have decided suddenly. Not out of hopelessness or agonized finality, but simply because it seemed to him a way to show them all, to make them all sorry.

It might have even worked, Santino was reluctant to admit to himself. He’d had his own reasons for plucking Armand out of the conflagration that had consumed the heretic Marius’ estate, separate from the lies he had fed his flock. They still believed that it was because Armand was beautiful and young, a worthy prize for sacrifice upon the dark altar.

That was fine for them; it was all they needed to know. No need to trot out those old humiliations Marius had inflicted on him in the past, their ancient history that had left Santino with the need to punish him with death, and then beyond even that. 

Once, he had thought the old degenerate might trust him with his secrets, but Marius had found Armand more worthy of his confidences. There was no shame in being bested by a worthy opponent, and yet Santino still saw no reason to let go of that old grudge. Not when it still felt so good to nurse it against his breast.

Vengeance had seemed as good a reason as any to keep Armand around, but as Santino rose from his crypt and shook the dust out of his tattered clothing, he realized that something else had appeared to take the place of Armand’s caterwauling: There, in the silence, he was worried.

Scowling, Santino headed for the upper levels of the catacombs. He had taken the lowest rooms for himself, and as he made his way towards the stairs that led above ground, ankle-deep stagnant water rippled around his boots. It seeped in around the soles, soaking his feet, more viscous than wet against his skin. It made him feel awake.

As he reached the branching wing where Armand slept, Santino realized he was rushing, and he made himself slow his steps. Whatever mischief their little foundling had gotten into, a few minutes was not going to make any difference for anything but his dignity.

Coming around a corner, he saw that there was a light burning in Armand’s cell, the weak glow of the single oil lamp each of them was allowed. Even knowing that, he was no less surprised or relieved when he entered the tiny room and found Armand already awake, seemingly unharmed and perfectly calm. 

He was sitting on the stone ledge next to his coffin, one hand idly stroking the wood, moving against the grain so that long wood splinters broke free from the planks and drove deep into his palm. His eyes were unfocused, and he seemed unaware of what he was doing, though the same could not be said of Santino. The smell of fresh blood trickling from the punctures was like a physical blow.

Armand raised his eyes. His expression was guarded, but not wary, not afraid. Even when he saw Santino there, his mind remained a blank. The air between them was flat, unbroken by even a single ripple of emotion.

“Dark Master,” he said, smiling. “I did not expect you. To what do I owe the honor?”

Santino’s eyes narrowed. “What do you think you are doing?”

“I only just woke up,” Armand said in that same steady voice, needling him with its lack of emotion. “Is it perhaps one of your dark festivals this evening? I didn’t know, though of course I’ll come at once.”

He rose, sweeping the frayed edges of his cloak around himself with self-conscious dignity. Though he had never hesitated to look Santino in the face, even in his darkest moments, when their eyes met now something new passed between them: a unspoken challenge.

“Something has changed in you,” Santino said.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Stiffly, like a marionette manipulated by strings, Armand lifted the hand that he had been using to stroke the boards of his coffin. The scrapes had healed over by now, and the splinters of wood had sunk into the skin. Without flinching, Armand pinched the longest one and pulled it out. A gout of blood followed, dripping down his wrist like a stigmata.

“Master, you look pale. Why don’t you have a taste? I’m sure you’ll feel better.”

It seemed that he knew almost as soon as the words were out that he had gone too far. He drew back a step, his bleeding hand moving to shield his face, but by then Santino was already upon him.

His hand closed around the tender white column of Armand’s throat, and he pushed him back until his shoulders hit the far wall. A shower of ancient dust rained down on them, falling in spurts from the limestone ceiling as Armand beat the heels of his boots against the wall. His fingers formed into claws, ripping at the hand around his neck, but Santino had had much worse than this. He tightened his grip, squeezing until he felt Armand’s throbbing pulse cut off.

Armand fought him for a long time, so long in fact that Santino began to suspect it was more reflex than desire. His eyes had glazed over, and still he struck out blindly, though without much strength.

All at once, Santino released him. Armand collapsed at his feet into a shivering heap. After giving him a moment to catch his breath, Santino fitted the toe of one of his boots under Armand’s chin and forced it back.

“I didn’t do anything,” Armand said. His voice was a quiet, raw whisper, distorted by his bruised throat, but his eyes were still hard and unremitting. “You can’t punish me if I don’t do anything wrong.”

Something about the way he said that gave Santino pause. The words were like so many tiny daggers thrust in ambush from behind his unwavering expression. Embarrassed that he had, perhaps, been too quick to indulge himself, Santino withdrew his boot and let Armand slump forward again, coughing weakly as his throat regained its shape.

“You’ve changed somehow,” Santino said, turning away. “It offends me. That’s all the reason I need.”

Armand did not answer right away; Santino heard him climb to his feet.

“Then I don’t yet understand your ways, Dark Master.”

Santino’s hands twisted into fists at his sides. “Armand. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t,” Armand said sharply. “Do you think I don’t know what it means to have a master?”

“I know that you do.” Santino could not quite make himself turn back to face him; Armand circled around to his front instead. “But I’m not like that heretic.”

“Of course you’re not,” Armand replied. “You never could be. But for now, you’re what I’ve got. Until such time as I change my situation.”

Santino knew he had not imagined the hint of menace in the words. At last, he understood why Armand’s protests had so abruptly fallen silent. He had not given up, or given in, but instead he had come to terms with the fact that his only hope was to wait. The time for vengeance would come, and until it did he would be patient.

The realization was a relief beyond measure. He had not really lost Armand at all.

Standing before him, Armand looked the same as ever. The collar of bruises around his throat had already faded to a dull greenish color, but they were slow to vanish entirely.

“I am sure that someday you will,” Santino said.

“But not today?”

Armand’s baleful eyes were unblinking as he reached up with one hand, tracing the fading marks on his neck. Seeming to move of their own accord, as if possessed by a mischievous spirit, his trailing fingers tipped lower, parting the already torn edges of his stained linen shirt. His uncovered skin was streaked with black grime, but as he peeled the fabric back and uncovered one of his shoulders, it revealed flesh that was still as white as if it had been sculpted from bone.

It took Santino a moment longer to realize what was happening, but when he did he turned his eyes away. “Spare yourself the humiliation, Armand.”

For the first time, Armand’s expression wavered. He had deployed the last weapon in his arsenal - and a formidable weapon at that - and it had burst uselessly upon Santino’s fortress walls.

“Fine,” he snapped, holding his shirt closed at the collar. “You wouldn’t know what to do anyway.”

“Half a millenia old, and you think I don’t know the ridiculous things two people can do with their bodies?”

“Marius taught me a lot,” Armand said, narrowing his eyes slyly.

“I’ve come to accept that Marius was possessed of certain arcane knowledge, but he never revolutionized anything in that particular school of thought. Believe me, Armand, everyone knew what perfect fools you two looked, carrying on as you did.”

To his surprise, Armand shrank from the words as if before a raised fist, sinking down into himself, lowering his head so his face was hidden behind his hair. 

“How I loathe you,” he whispered.

“Listen to me,” Santino said. “What he did with you was but a vestigial reflex of his mortality. The reason he did it was because powerful men must flex their strength from time to time, in order to prove to themselves that they still have it. I didn’t bring you here for that. I’ll never want it, not from you.”

Armand peeked out at him from behind his hair. Santino couldn’t read his expression, but he preferred to imagine that it hewed closer to relief than to disappointment. But when Armand spoke next, he couldn’t be sure.

“You old Puritans love to spoil everyone else’s fun.”

“And you children think you know everything,” Santino replied. 

With a sigh, he retreated to sit on the limestone ledge next to Armand’s coffin. Then he waved him over. “Come closer.”

Armand hesitated a moment, but then stepped nearer. Santino applied the thumbnail of his left hand to his right wrist, slitting it open. He had been fasting, and the blood flowed slowly at first, then more easily. Armand’s eyes snapped to it, entranced by the steady drip.

“Go on,” Santino said, offering his wrist. “I know you’re hungry.”

When Armand held back, Santino thrust his wrist out further, in a jerking violent gesture. Armand lunged forward, clamping his mouth over the wound. His small fangs drove in before it could close.

Santino could feel his hungry throat sucking, drinking deeply. He took his next breath in a strangled gasp, and lifted his free hand to set on Armand’s tangled hair, drawing him close.

It was as if a wire had been strung from his wrist to his heart, one that sang like a plucked string with each draw of Armand’s ravenous mouth. He felt it in his breast, in his very bones. Lower still, reverberating like an echo in those deep caverns of his body which he had long since been denied.

Growing softer and softer still, but never entirely fading.


	4. Chapter 4

_Porta San Sebastiano  
Rome, 1634_

The stars had begun to fade in the east by the time Santino and Armand returned to the walls of Rome. It was past midnight now, closer to dawn, but by the way Armand lingered, dragging his feet and kicking at stones, Santino could tell that he wasn’t ready to return yet. He paused atop the city gate and waited for Armand to catch up.

Armand alighted beside him. With his clean clothes and his immaculate face, his red hair rendered the color of wine by the blue light of dawn, he looked like a different person.

“Did you find what you were looking for, Master?”

“I’ve heard enough,” Santino said. “Thirty years ago, they killed a man for theorizing that the sun was at the center of the cosmos. Now it seems they will be lenient with a second who says the same. It may seem to them that an eternity has come and gone between the two, but in truth time passes no more slowly for mortals than for us. The world is changing.”

Armand yawned cavernously, as if bored with the theoretical talk, but Santino wasn’t fooled. He knew that he was listening intently.

“It’s probably just a fluke,” Armand said. “Or else no one cares. Why bother getting all worked up over a bunch of dull old men?”

Santino suppressed a smile in the upturned collar of his coat. He hid the expression the best he could, but he was not surprised when Armand caught him out. “What’s so funny? Master.”

“I might have said the same, once. In truth, I was merely annoyed that everyone seemed to be talking past me, about things I could not understand. It was as if I was a foreign visitor to a land of reason, with no one to translate the local language for me. I was in Baghdad then--”

This time, it was Armand’s turn to laugh, which he did softly and stifled behind his palm. “Master, you’re a _Saracen_.”

“Not quite,” Santino told him, amused in spite of himself. “Neither was my maker. He was something older, something you and I may not have the existential wherewithal to understand. But he was also a man of reason, a philosopher, and so he liked it there.”

“I guess you didn’t, or else you wouldn’t be here.”

Santino shrugged. “The world changes, whether I will it or not. I remember, he spent his nights in the great House of Learning, pouring over the ancient texts. There was an immense collection of natural science and philosophy, the wisdom of the Ancients. Far more than there is here in Rome, or even in the great Constantinople. I fear, even now, that much of it has been lost irrevocably to time.”

“Marius had a great library, too,” Armand said abruptly, his expression unreadable. “I hope nothing too valuable was lost there.”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Santino said brusquely before continuing.

“Many of the greatest scholars of the time had set about rigorously testing the claims made by Ptolemy, Galen, Aristotle. That which had seemed like so much hard fact could not withstand the siege engines of the new sciences. I think this displeased my master, for he had spent his time in Athens and Alexandria before and had been intimately familiar with the men now being exposed left and right as imaginative fabulists.

“Still, he refused to rest upon past successes. He had always been, I think, an independent sort of man. He did what seemed best in the moment, without much regard for either received wisdom or future consequences. Regardless, where once our estate in the city had been the seat of quiet and contemplative gatherings, musical performances, intimate talks, now it was a hub for intellectuals. They came all the time. Alchemists, medical doctors, philosophers, naturalists. He kept the brightest of them, for he was working on something.”

“What was it?” Armand asked.

“Pardon me?”

“What was he working on? What could possibly interest one of our kind? We don’t suffer from disease; we see the natural world with perfect clarity. We don’t have to worry about Heaven and Hell. So what was it?”

“Nothing,” Santino said. “Some perfect nonsense. What matters is that I was bored, I felt neglected, I grew restless. I came here so as to make something with my own hands; something real and tangible, beyond the realm of theoretical talk.”

“Do you miss him?” Armand asked. His lips formed themselves into a faint smile. “Your weird, brilliant Master?”

“Don’t ask such ridiculous questions,” Santino replied.

“Is it ridiculous because the answer is yes? Or because it’s no?”

“You’re determined not to hear what I’m trying to tell you.”

“I hear you,” Armand said. “And I understand.”

“I don’t think that you do,” Santino said. He took a deep breath. The words he had to speak next felt lodged in his throat, and he shook them loose like a cough. “The coven in Paris is in need of guidance. I want you to go and lead them on the dark road.”

At last, Armand had nothing to say. He was quiet for what seemed a long time. The rosy blush that had infused his skin at the beginning of the night drained away, leaving him pale and grave as death.

“If that is your will, Master,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “I’ll do as you instruct.”

“I’m not ordering you,” Santino said. “I’m asking you, because you’re ready. You don’t have to answer me right away, but know that tomorrow your preparation begins.”

Armand said nothing. Unsettled by his silence, Santino looked up and scanned the brightening horizon. The sun would rise soon.

“Come,” he said. “We should get back.”

Santino made for the edge of the gate, and he had nearly leaped to the road below when he realized that Armand was not following him. Before he could look back to see what the trouble was, Armand called to him.

“Dark Master, what was his name? Your maker in Baghdad.”

Santino’s brow furrowed. The question seemed to come from nowhere, out of the very past itself. Armand did not need to know about that to do his duty, the dead ends and false starts of the past would only confuse him as he started out on his own journey. And yet, before he could stop himself, Santino heard himself reply.

“He told me to call him Saydan-Ayt,” Santino said. “That was his name.”

He glanced back to see what effect the name might have had on Armand, but he was not where Santino had left him. Armand was already in motion, passing Santino in a blur of movement. Alighting from the edge of the gate and landing on solid ground some thirty feet below them, disappearing in an instant in to the shadows.


	5. Chapter 5

It was raining when Santino awoke the next evening, and the catacombs were swamped in knee-deep, stinking water. As Santino made his way up to the main atrium where his flock gathered, he found them soggy and ill-tempered and snappish. It was as fitting a send-off as any he was likely to get.

Armand had retreated to a dark corner, where he crouched with the moisture weighing down his new velvet clothing, looking like a slightly wilted white rose, gilded with a dingy dew. His eyes sought Santino out as soon as he entered the chamber, but he made no attempt to approach him. As usual, Santino could not read his well-guarded thoughts, but he felt the steady hum of some intense emotion coursing through him, throbbing like the beat of a drum.

Only he knew what would happen next, and he kept his secrets well. The rest of them suspected, though. They had noticed Santino’s new vestments, detected the distinctly human scent of ambergris and wine that hung about him. 

Alessandra approached him out of the shadows. She spread her ragged skirts wide and curtseyed to him. “Dark Master,” she said, eyeing him shrewdly through her stringy hair. “We await your command.”

Santino took her by the shoulders and pulled her back to her feet. He shut his eyes, tracing the arcs of light that flashed behind his closed lids, sorry echoes of the visions that had once inspired him to come here. The rain beat down on the ground above them, and he could hear all the small crawling things that lived in the soil moving about in response to it. They did not sound like divine guidance to him.

All at once, his eyes flew open, and he began to speak.

“The Enemy has spoken to me,” he heard his own voice say. “He wishes a sacrifice. The most beautiful among you will strike the greatest blow, and so he has asked for Armand.”

With that, he flung his arm towards the ragged shape that stood watching him from the shadows. Armand stepped forward, taking Santino’s hand with the coy delicacy of a lady being asked to dance. Santino could see by his eyes that he was laughing secretly, as if at some macabre private joke they shared. 

“Armand, despised by God and beloved of the Beast, do you accept this calling?”

“Whither you command, Master, there shall I go,” Armand replied.

“There are rituals to complete first,” Santino said. “We must go into the wilderness and wait for a devil to appear to us there. Alessandra will lead you in my absence.”

A murmur of disease passed through the assembled flock. They were unhappy at the thought of being left alone. Armand had always been his favorite, that was the consensus, and though they were not right on that account, they were not entirely wrong either. Still, it was not fear of missing out on whatever mysteries might be imparted to Armand when he left to commune with the dark spirits. No, it was jealousy pure and simple that moved them to displeasure.

It was better that way, to be driven by dark and petty impulses. Santino knew as well as anyone that no good could come from poking and prodding at secrets that they had no business knowing.

“Silence!” he snapped, his voice echoing in the chamber. It was loud, inhumanly so, and enough to shake a cloud of limestone dust from the ceiling.

They quieted after that, watching him intently.

“I shall not leave you,” Santino said. He squeezed Armand’s hand and stepped away from him. His fingers fumbled at his collar, undoing the laces. “I shall be with each of you.”

There was a low stone slab against one wall. They had fashioned it into a kind of coarse altar, decorated with crude runes, all the sick rust color of old blood. A cross made of two unvarnished beams hung inverted over the stone. The downward facing tip had been sharpened into a vicious point, suspended like the Sword of Damocles.

“Be not afraid,” Santino went on. He didn’t look back, but he heard wet slithering behind him, the almost inaudible sounds of something moving along the wet floor. Water ripped against his heels.

Only one of them was bold enough to draw so close. Santino supposed it was Alessandra, ever conscious of her role in the coven’s hierarchy, or else just annoyed with him for dallying with Armand. She would make him suffer before all this was through, and he would probably even be glad for that.

It was nice to know that someone cared.

Once the laces at his throat were loosened sufficiently, Santino slipped a hand into his high collar and raked open his doublet and the delicate shirt underneath. Some of the glass beads that had been sewn into the fabric sprang free, ringing off the altar stone and then landing in the water, sinking out of sight.

Santino shed the garments as he stepped forward, toeing off his shoes. Naked from the waist up, he felt the chill of the catacombs pushing in on him. It was as if a dead hand had suddenly wrapped around his entire body, as if he was caressed on every part of his uncovered flesh by an icy embrace.

He heard again the anticipatory stirring behind him. It had been a long time since he had performed this ritual, but even those who had not been part of his flock at the time surely had heard of it in whisper and rumor. The Dark Communion was one of their most profane rites, a shameless display of trust, and camaraderie, and other frivolous nonsense. He did it now in hopes that it would hold them over until he returned.

Santino loosened the waist of his trousers and let them fall, then he stripped off the hose and cast them aside. He half-glanced over his shoulder as he finished undressing, trying to catch a glimpse of Armand out of the corner of his eye but unable to find him.

Armand had never attended this particular ceremony, had never seen Santino like this before. He’d known from the first that you had to be careful with that boy, that Armand put on an amenable face but if would certainly never miss a display of vulnerability. Perhaps he would not act on it right away, but you could rest assured that he would notice, and he would not forget.

Naked now, pierced on all sides by gazes of insatiable hunger, Santino took to the altar. He lay on his back, his eyes fixed on the honed point of the inverted cross above him. Deep scratches scored the edges of the stone, and Santino fit his fingers into them, curling around the top of the altar. At the far end, large chips had flaked off beneath the assault of violent blows, and into these Santino slid his heels.

He intoned the incantation.

“Blood and flesh. Bone and breath. Such are the ornaments of Babylon the Great. Such are the bars of the prison that restricts the true self.”

The words were barely out before they were upon him. Alessandra was the first, letting out a high, shrill cry as she sprang at him. Her fingers grasped his shoulders, digging in so hard they cut bruises into his skin and cracked his scapulae. When her teeth locked around his neck, it was without gentleness. She spanned the front of his throat, like one of those predatory cats that throttles the life out of its prey. Her fangs ripped in, shredding the flesh. 

A gout of hot fluid washed over him, steaming in the chilly air. It was too much, Santino realized, too soon. This was not the orgy of ritual they all fell prey to; this was simply a fit of pique and a rather petty attempt at revenge.

He reached to push her off, but before he could finish lifting his hand, an icy iron grip closed around it, forcing the limb back against the stone. Fang clamped down on his wrist, and then a mouth like a hot vice.

Moving more on instinct than the conscious desire to free himself, he tried to lift his head, but fingers wound their way into his hair and forced it back. He focused on his breathing, on making each inhale slow and steady. 

Above him, he could see the cross, and beyond that a swirling vortex of shadow. Darkness drawn from the furthest corners of the catacombs, converging before his eyes. It almost seemed like it would become something, a vision or a voice from beyond, but it never did.

They were all around him now, and he felt the pinpricks of their teeth on his ribs, his arms, the insides of his thighs. A thousand cuts, each bleeding the dark mysteries that he kept secreted within.

As they drank and drank, Santino kept his eyes fixed on the spot of darkness above his head. He watched it expand, swelling out towards him like a suspended cloth slowly filling with water. More bemused than worried, he waited for it to overtake him, drenching him in a warm wave of unconsciousness.

He could hear his pulse hammering in his ears. He could still feel their mouths on him, unwinding him out in all direction, but the sensation was fading now. All those scattered pieces were drawing together again, towards a coherent center.

Santino blinked his eyes open. It was hard to draw breath, though that did not overly concern him. It was quickly apparent why: Armand was kneeling over him, one knee planted on either side of Santino’s ribcage. His mouth was ringed in blood, his expression that of an exasperated teacher waiting for a foolish pupil to tire of his antics.

When he realized that Santino was watching him, he leaned forward, bending elegantly at the waist. He pressed his mouth to Santino’s, though his lips were numb and slow to respond. Armand’s teeth cut against his tongue, and Santino could taste copper, faintly, like an electrical spark.

It was the last he felt, as the darkness claimed him again.


	6. Chapter 6

When he woke next, he knew even before he opened his eyes that he was not alone. The coven had departed for the night, but a single presence remained, a cold candle flickering in the darkness.

Santino blinked his eyes open. He was still stretched out on the stone altar, and the first thing he saw was the cross upended above him. Then, almost immediately upon the heels of that, a stirring of movement beside him. His vision was still rimmed in black, allowing only a small perforation through which he could glimpse the light and figures of the world beyond.

It cleared quickly, though, when Armand spoke.

“A fine start we’re off to, Master,” he said. “I thought you were going to prepare me to lead the coven, and yet you’ve spent half the night indulging in stupid games.”

Santino sat up. His head swam briefly, but soon cleared. His tender flock had hardly been gentle, though he supposed it was nice to know where he stood with them. Rail as they might against his authority, he wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

“I am preparing you,” he replied, though his lips felt numb and slow to form the words.

“You can’t expect me to do _that_ ,” Armand said. “Is that what it means to lead?”

“To lead means to give strength when strength is lacking. To devote oneself to those in need.”

“To martyr oneself upon a tawdry cross,” Armand sneered. He reached down beside the altar and gathered up a bundle of sodden cloth, which he shoved, dripping and tangled, into Santino’s arms. ‘I found your clothes.”

“Thank you.” Santino shook out the garments, and then began to dress.

“They stink,” Armand said, wrinkling his nose. “Last night they were new, and nice enough. And you expect me to believe that tonight, out of the blue, you came up with some perfectly ridiculous excuse to ruin them?”

A shudder wracked his body. His back was to Santino, who regretted not being able to see his face.

“Do you like being like this?” Armand said quietly. “What could you possibly be getting out of it?”

Santino paused in what he was doing. “Alas. You’re upset with me.”

“You make it difficult to be pleased, Master.” Armand kicked the water, sending a shower of droplets nearly to the ceiling. “Never mind. Let’s get this over with. Today Paris, tomorrow the Underworld.”

Santino finished dressing and climbed down from the altar. His once white collar was dingy and limp, so he left it behind. The rest was soaked through, but sufficient for the time being.

“Come, then,” he said. “If you’re so impatient.”

Armand didn’t move right away. He waited until Santino had nearly disappeared up through one of the tunnels that connected the catacombs to the surface, his eyes fixed hard upon Santino’s back as if expecting him to, at any moment, call the whole thing off. Eventually, though, his curiosity got the better of him and he scampered after him.

The journey into the city was wet and unpleasant. The rain had not slowed at all, and it seemed poised to continue into the next day. If it kept up at this rate, Santino knew, the entire lower chambers of the catacombs would flood. For once, he would not have to be present for it. He supposed his flock would manage in his absence; Santino had every intention of riding the storm out somewhere drier and warmer.

He found it in the form of a suite of apartments near the merchant district. It was one of several properties Santino had surreptitiously scouted over the past week. He had felt that this moment must come soon, and he had wanted to be prepared. 

It took some coaxing, but eventually the porter opened the gate for them. While Armand waited, hopping from foot to foot so that no one might, for even a moment, think that he wasn’t bored of the whole affair, Santino handed over a sack of coins to secure the room and extract a promise that the two of them would be left alone.

The house was roused. A pair of servants brought a basin for washing and Santino kept the lights low until they were gone, dim enough that his soaked and shabby clothes were obscured. It mattered very little to him one way or the other, but he thought Armand might be embarrassed.

Presently, they were left alone once more, and Santino set about the urgent business of ensuring that the doors and windows were closed and locked. When he returned, Armand had stripped to the waist and was combing water through his hair.

Santino paused a moment in the doorway, watching him. When Armand bent over the basin to splash water on his face, he could see the outline of his vertebrae through his skin, ascending his back like a heavenly ladder, until it was lost beneath the aurora of his red hair.

“I know you’re there,” Armand called back. “You can look all you want. I don’t mind. Do you know why?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“Because you’re not thinking anything when you watch me like that. It’s no different than having a housecat in the room while you’re getting undressed.”

“I can’t help but feel that you’re trying to goad me into something.”

“Is that so?”

Armand straightened up, pulling his shirt over his shoulders but leaving it unbuttoned. With his hair slicked down around his face and the linen hanging loosely around him, he looked younger than Santino knew him to be. With a sigh, Santino retreated to sit on one of the couches that lined the apartments. He fairly sunk into it, and he frowned at the unfamiliar sensation as he tried to situate himself.

“Come join me, if you’re finished dallying over there.”

Armand approached him slowly. He’d slipped off his shoes, and his feet made almost no sound at all on the floor. One step after the next, taken as if in a dream. He flung himself down into a chair, draping his legs over one of the arms.

“Will we be staying here?” Armand said. “It’s a change from the catacombs, I guess. Though I suppose a rented room for penny-pinching merchants could be considered another of the circles of Hell?”

“No,” Santino told him. “We won’t stay long. Only until I can procure us passage on a ship.”

At that, Armand turned towards him. His curiosity registered on his face before he could school it back into a mask of disinterest.

“We’re going south,” Santino told him since he did not trust Armand to ask. “There are things you need to see before you take over the Paris coven. Consider it a pilgrimage of sorts.”

“I’ve never heard of that before.”

“Of course you haven’t. These are mystery rites, made manifest to me alone.”

Armand’s eyes thinned. Abruptly, he swung around in his seat, sitting up straight with his bare feet flat on the floor. 

“You’re acting strange,” he said. “Evasive. Does this have something to do with your smart master?”

“Where did you get such an idea?”

“Saydan-Ayt,”Armand said, recalling the name all at once. Santino was loathe to admit it, but the syllables still affected him strangely, like an incantation that worked upon him from within. Armand seemed to like the effect his words had so well that he tried them again. “Saydan-Ayt, who got bored with you. Who abandoned you for alchemy and magic tricks.”

“He didn’t abandon me,” Santino said, much more sharply than he had intended. Enough to bring Armand up short. He stopped speaking and blinked, doe-eyed, up at Santino.

“I was the one that left,” Santino went on, his voice tight. “So do not think to accuse him of being remiss in his duties. You don’t know a thing about it, Armand.”

To his surprise, Armand was silent for a long moment. His face was very composed and grave when he said, “Then I spoke hastily, Master. I’m sorry.”

Santino glanced away, finding it harder to meet Armand’s gaze when he was contrite than when he was combative. He knew that Armand did not mean half of the barbs his stinging tongue concocted; he was merely defensive, suspicious, his back ever up against the wall as if in anticipation of an attack. 

That, too, was Santino’s fault.

When he felt the cushions beside him depress, Santino turned back, surprised. Armand had shifted over to sit beside him. His first impulse was to pull away, his body even ratcheting up a few notches in anticipation, but in the end he stayed where he was.

Armand studied his profile in the low light. Out of the corner of his eye, Santino saw him open his mouth a few times, then close it again when he came up short of words. At last, Santino spoke, just to have something to fill up the silence.

“He meant to give us back the daylight, you know. He was so certain that he could do it. He’d noticed that some of our kind are more resistant to the death-sleep of the rising sun. That some rose early and ventured out while it was still twilight, while a blue glow yet remained in the sky. A naturally-occurring mutation, he called it. He thought to combine samples of this variant blood, to create an even more resistant strain. From there, he told me it would be a simple enough matter to create a serum that could be administered to even the most light-averse blood drinkers.”

“It’s been so long,” Armand said. “I don’t even miss the sun anymore.”

“I told him as much myself,” Santino replied. “But he said that once he perfected the technique, then why not a serum to ward off the thirst? Why not one that would give us back our carnal desires?”

Armand sniffed disdainfully at the suggestion. “I’m fine like this.”

“You’re perfect,” Santino told him. It was a poor attempt at flattery indeed, but Armand still basked in it. “But even if he had seen you, I doubt he would have sworn off his work. It gave him a purpose, provided a shape for his endless existence. More, I began to think, than even making another of his kind had.”

“Oh,” Armand said, eyeing him curiously.

“I think it is simply the nature of things,” Santino went on. “When I founded the first coven, it was because of the Great Plague. It had decimated Baghdad, Jerusalem, Constantinople. It was general all over Europe. I thought, without exaggeration or hysterics, that the age of man was at an end. That the last of them would soon be overcome by sickness, and we would be left alone to wander the Earth, growing ever hungrier, ever more phantasmal.”

Armand shifted closer, resting his head on Santino’s shoulder. At the first touch, he winced, but then he reached up and set his hand lightly on Armand’s hair.

“I could not help but imagine what must come next. Would we become as shades, each of us alike in our forgetting? Or would we turn on one another? Cannibalizing our own kind in a desperate bid for food, until only one remained.”

“And you were afraid that was how your life would end,” Armand surmised. “At the hands of that ruthless blood drinker.”

Santino smiled bitterly, without humor. His hand continued to move through Armand’s hair, combing it so that the strands wound round his fingers, looping over and under them. 

“In my hubris, I think I was more concerned that I might end up the last of them. Back then, that was what scared me more than anything, being alone as the world ended. Saydan-Ayt didn’t care. He was worried it would interrupt his work, and that was all. It was a weakness of character on my part, that I could not calm my fears. But I wasn’t the only one. I could feel it moving through all the great cities: a pervasive anxiety overtaking our kind.

“There were others like me, worried that their long and illustrious existence would be ended by the fragility of man. Who wondered why they had been given immortality at all, only to have it cut short by mortal weakness. Then, I realized how I might help them, how I might save us all. It was a true shock of inspiration; it came to me fully formed, as if it had been delivered by a messenger rather than deduced through reason and logic.”

He felt Armand shift beside him, and Santino glanced down, afraid he was boring him. But Armand had only turned so he could look up at him, the better to see his face as he spoke.

“I couldn’t do anything about the disease,” Santino said. “But I could at least give them meaning. I could, in my small capacity, explain why we were like this. Surely, that’s what everyone longs for. Behind all our other schemes and philosophies and doctrines and mores for living, we all just want to be told what it’s all for. That there is some meaning in existence.”

“Was Satan the best you could come up with?” Armand said, not viciously. But even his gentlest teasing had an edge to it.

“I was working to a deadline,” Santino said dryly. “But thank you for the vote of confidence.”

“That’s what you will have me do in Paris, then? Comfort the sick and afflicted and lost through self-flagellation? Make up little rituals like that spectacle tonight, all in the name of our Dark Lord.”

“No,” Santino said. “Not at all. You’ll get there, and you’ll do what you must do. Because you can’t just do nothing. That’s why I chose you for this task. No one else is capable.”

Armand’s eyes narrowed. He lifted himself slightly, just enough to press a quick kiss to the corner of Santino’s mouth. It happened so fast that Santino didn’t even have a chance to register whether his lips were hot or cold, only that the temperature was striking.

“Don’t think this means I’m not cross with you,” he said, without malice. “You made me prance around, jump through all those hoops to appease the Dark Lord, and now you tell me you don’t even believe in it?”

“I believe,” Santino told him. “In fact, I know it to be true. Every word.”


	7. Chapter 7

They stayed in Rome for two nights, holed up in Santino’s rented rooms. Armand didn’t complain, and indeed he seemed to be making the best of it, filling the idle hours with little jokes and stories from his time alive. Santino was utterly annoyed by his prattle, and completely charmed.

On the third evening, they got wind of a ship sailing for the Ottoman coast.

Santino secreted them deep in the cargo hold, amongst the goods for trade. On the sixth day, they were in the port of Acre, and from there they went east, traveling overland. Though they moved with the caravan at first, they quickly outpaced them as they crossed into the desert. They sold their camels at the first opportunity, as it was more expedient to travel on foot

Santino led the way, moving between oases and small permanent settlements. Feeding inconspicuously and then moving on before it was light, less demon than shadow.

They made good time, and on the fourth night they breasted a hill and saw in the valley below the walls of a city. They were at least as tall as the fortifications surrounding Rome, and from within there emerged the silhouettes of towering domes and spires. Vast in number, and yet still not so numerous, nor so imposing as they were in Santino’s memories.

It was Baghdad, once that jewel of the world’s cities. Though Santino had heard tales of its utter destruction at the hands of the Khan’s armies, in fact it seemed to still be a thriving metropolis. Though familiar buildings were missing from the skyline, others had been erected in their place. 

Santino meant to bypass the place entirely; their destination lay far to their east and he did not want to lose sight of that. However, Armand made such a great show of sighing wistfully and dragging his feet that Santino had little choice but to concede to an unscheduled stop. They passed silently through the sleeping suburbs outside the wall and slipped by the dozing guards at the western gate.

Once more within the city limits, Santino was gripped by a strange feeling of calm. Like any cosmopolitan capital, this one kept awake through the night. There were still lights burning in most of the apartments, and he could hear voices coming from beyond the high garden walls.

Santino paused in the shadow of a building and re-acclimated himself to the geography. He might have remained there indefinitely, under the spell of his memories, if Armand had not come up beside him and begun to tap his foot in irritation.

“Master,” he sighed. “I’m starving.”

“Then go feed,” Santino told him.

Armand gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes. “ You said you lived here before, didn’t you? That means it’s your job to show me around. Even you must know that.”

Santino hesitated a moment over the request. He should have told Armand that this was a religious pilgrimage, a journey for personal betterment not pleasure. But, gazing down at his protege, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. 

“Quickly, then,” he relented. “I don’t want to be caught out. There are not catacombs here to shelter us.”

Pleasantly surprised at having gotten his way, Armand trotted at Santino’s heels. They headed towards the center of the city, following a familiar network of streets though not much else looked the way he remembered. Santino pointed out the places were all the old libraries had stood, the shallow ditches that had once channeled the great networks of canals.

Armand seemed even to be listening.

At any rate, he kept silent as Santino told him of the siege of the city. He had not been there to witness it himself, and indeed he had been much deeper into his vocation - a magnitudes more dour and self-serious coven master than he was now - when it had happened. It had been with more than a little guilt and trepidation over breaking the rules he had laid in place that he had listened at the merchant port to travelers’ tales of the fall of his former home.

Hesitantly, haltingly, for it was the first time he had even tried to speak of it, he told Armand that the loss of life was a matter between mortals. It was the loss of knowledge that struck a heavier blow, for it echoed down to all of them through the centuries.

“By the time I left this place for the last time, Saydan-Ayt was spending almost every night in the House of Wisdom. That was what they called it, the great library sponsored by the Caliph. It had volumes from China, India, the ancient pagans. All of them painstakingly translated and cataloged and preserved. Some say there were a million books there, and Saydan-Ayt seemed determined to work his way methodically through each one in turn. He was searching for something, you see. The key that would unlock the mystery of his research. I don’t think he found it. Whatever he hoped would be there, it’s gone now. Vanished, with the rest of it. When the city fell, the Khan’s army threw the volumes out of the windows of the library and into the river. It’s said that the waters of the Tigris turned black from the ink.”

Santino felt a gentle pressure on his wrist, and he flinched from it.

“Master…” Armand chided quietly. He reached out again, deliberately, and this time Santino allowed Armand to slip a hand into his.

“That’s not necessary, you know,” Santino said. But when Armand didn’t pull away, Santino shifted his grip and laced their fingers together. When he glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Armand was smiling faintly.

“I wonder sometimes, if Saydan-Ayt stayed until the end,” Santino admitted. “How well I can picture him heedless of all warnings, hard at work while all he had built came down around him.”

“Would that make it better? Or worse?”

“Better or worse than what?” Santino replied. 

Armand shrugged. “Then whatever alternative you’ve imagined over all those long centuries. I’m asking you, would it be better that he died among those things that he loved than that he never came looking for you?”

“Are you sure you should be asking me this?”

“I mean it,” Armand said. “I’m being serious. You told me yourself, you once thought you foresaw the end of the world. Well, Master, I think we can both agree that turned out to be a wash, but, for all your scheming and planning and preparing for the worst, you must know that even our kind must die some day. Maybe, in spite of all the assumed wisdom, we too are made with a built-in lifespan.”

Santino chanced a glance at him, his curiosity stirred by the direction the conversation had taken. Though Armand was still gliding blithely along at his side, reaching out occasionally to trace with his fingertips the tile pattern that adorned one of the arched doorways, he seemed in an uncharacteristically earnest mood.

“If that’s the case, then how would you wish to die, Armand?”

“I’m the exception. I really do plan on living forever.”

“Then I must be the exception, too,” Santino replied. “I have tried many times to picture myself dead, a corpse in all the colorful stages of decay. I can’t do it.”

“A fine Satanist you are,” Armand said with a toss of his hair. “You can’t even manage nihilism properly. I guess maybe you’re wrong about Saydan-Ayt, too. He would have been long gone by the time the city burned. I know that Marius stayed in Rome until the barbarians were fairly at the gate, but he may be a special case.”

“Let’s not talk about him,” Santino said.

“All right,” Armand replied with a shrug. “We’ll talk about something else, then.”

Santino had to wrack his brain for what that might be. He’d never been one for small talk, and once had fairly prided himself on his inability to adapt to the infinite small variations of social situations. Now, though, he felt like he ought to come up with something, since they were being so civilized.

“This used to be the Christian part of the city,” Santino told him. “It had its own marketplace and hospital. So with all the districts: Jewish, Saracen, and the Pagans. They radiated out from the center of the city as spokes from a wheel.”

“How nice. You all got along.”

“Not precisely,” Santino said. “And not always. Though better than you might expect, everything considered.”

The narrow streets opened up into a public square, and a garden shaded with junipers and olive trees, dotted with the graceful deep blue curves of wild irises and the bright orange moons of chamomile flowers.

“This is more like it,” Armand said, taking a step forward. He was brought up short when Santino refused to relinquish the grip on his hand, planting his feet and anchoring him back in the shadows.

“Wait,” he said, a whisper on the bare edge of his breath. “Listen.”

Armand sighed. “I’m listening, Master. What now?”

“Listen. To _them_.”

Armand opened his mouth to respond, but then he closed it again so quickly that his teeth clicked together. Out of the shadowy places beneath the branches of the juniper trees, a ring of shadows broke free, and wavered, and resolved into ghostly human forms.

With a gasp, Armand retreated, nearly stumbling over his own feet as Santino swung him around. Catching him up with a sweep of his arm, he pushed Armand behind him, planting himself bodily between his young protege and the encroaching blood drinkers.

Little good it would do, a senseless chivalrous gesture like that. There were four of them closing in. One quite new to the blood by Santino’s eye, but the rest aged and experienced. Their leader was a woman with a jeweled veil drawn across her face. Her dark eyes were hooded behind kohl-rimmed lids.

“I’ll draw them off,” Santino whispered, so soft as to be almost inaudible. “Run when you get the chance.”

The woman stepped forward, her feet making no sound at all where they touched the paving stones. Her voice, though, rang out loud and clear, though Santino could not say whether it issued from behind the delicate veil or from the air itself, echoing in his skull.

“You will not,” she said, in a serviceable Latin so that Santino and Armand could understand. “You will remain as you are, and I will allow you to die with a dignity that trespassers and thieves do not deserve.”

“We’re not thieves,” Santino replied. “Nor trespassers, unless all poor travelers on pilgrimage are counted as such now.”

“Lost little boys, you are far from Christian shores. This is the land of the Djinn, and we do not count hospitality to pilgrims among our customs. I am Esma. I am your death.”

“We’re only passing through,” Santino said. “We require no hospitality.”

“Where are you going, ibn Fadlam? With your sweet little shadow, ibn Battuta?”

“That I cannot say,” Santino said. “I’m sorry, Mistress.”

“You do not amuse me,” Esma replied. Then, without so much as a twitch of muscle, she blinked out of existence.

Santino swept one arm back, catching Armand in the midsection and shoving him back down the alley out of range of what was to come. An instant later, a blow hit him solidly in the chest, sweeping him up like a divine hand and dashing him against the brick wall of the garden.

His shoulder struck the stone first, splintering it and dropping him to the pavement in a shower of plaster dust. Before Santino could catch his breath, a hammer of lead dropped onto his chest, crushing the wind out of him.

Esma stood over him, the toe tip of one of her dainty feet compressing his breastbone so he could not draw breath.

“Don’t struggle,” she whispered, as she began to press down. Santino’s ribs first creaked, and then, one after the next, cracked under the pressure. In the same instant, the air around him began to grow hot as she drew upon the power of the flame to consume him.

For all his bold and fatalistic talk, Santino had never thought he would die like this. But, with his vision rapidly fading to black, he lacked even the strength to fight against it. He could only pray to whatever devils might be listening that Armand had the good sense to flee while he had the chance. 

But then, in the last moment of consciousness, he saw a shadow dancing in the corner of his eye. A dark shape moving against the black cataract that had blighted his sight. It struck Esma in the side, not enough to drive her back, but sufficient to knock her off balance momentarily.

She shifted her stance, allowing Santino a moment to catch a burning breath. His vision cleared, and he was horrified to see that the she still stood above him, now gripping Armand by the throat, holding his feet clear of the ground while he kicked and struggled.

“Leave him--” Santino tried to sit up, but before he could make much progress Esma kicked him in the face, knocking him back so hard that his head bounced off the paving stones with a dull crack.

“What perfect fools you two are,” she said. “Am I supposed to be moved by this ridiculous display? Am I to take pity on your enfeebled state?”

Both of Armand’s hands were wrapped around her wrist and he had managed to loosen her grip enough to gasp out, “He is the leader of the Roman coven, idiot. You would be slaying the Pope of our kind.”

“Think you that I care for your pathetic titles? You are but corpses of heretic souls not allowed the glory of Heaven. We are the true power when the sun sets.”

She shook Armand’s hands off as if they were nothing, tightening her grip. Armand’s eyes widened momentarily, but he recovered at once. His expression sharpened, his gaze becoming a deadly and focused blade. It was a look Santino knew well, for he had been on the receiving end of it. If it was to be the last thing he saw, then at least there would be that…

Armand’s lips stirred again, though no sound came out. With great effort, he went through the motions of forming words, something that Santino could not make out.

Esme paused.

With a flick of her wrist, she tossed Armand to the pavement, where he landed in an offended heap, seemingly not even hurt. Santino made as if to go to his side, but Armand placed a hand on his chest, keeping him at bay.

Esme, still towering over them imperiously, spoke in a low voice. “What did you say?”

“You heard me,” Armand replied, eyes blazing defiantly. “Don’t act as if you didn’t. His master is the one called Saydan-Ayt. And if you do anything to us, he just might be angry enough to come out of hiding.”

Though he knew Armand was only bluffing, Santino’s heart grew leaden in his breast. Armand sounded as if he spoke the truth, and for a moment it seemed Esme would be convinced.

Then, she threw back her head, and laughed.

“So, you know of our stories, even on those far shores. But here in the East, we are not so backward. We know a rumor when we hear it, and the great Saydan-Ayt is a rumor indeed.”

Santino was gripped with a panic he had not felt even when facing his death. Even when facing Armand’s death. “You’re wrong,” he said, hearing the curious note of urgency enter into his voice and powerless to prevent it. “He’s real. I knew him--”

Esme stop him with a sharp glance that cleaved the words where they hung in the air. “Enough. That’s more than enough from both of you.”

The rest of her coven had seemed content to stand back and let her handle matters, but one of them started forward now. Esme stopped him in his tracks with a wave of her hand.

“Little Christian ghosts,” she said thoughtfully, looking down on them. “ Go back to your people and tell them to stay out of Baghdad. You are not wanted here, and you have failed even to provide sport for hunting. The Djinn hold this land, and we are in the wind that blows from every direction, in the foam that caps the sea, in every grain of sand you crossed to get here. Make sure the message is relayed.”

“He will,” Armand said instantly. “I told you, he’s the Pope of our kind. He knows people.”

“Your fledgling is wise beyond his station,” Esme said. “Wiser than you, at any rate, Your Excellency.”

Santino lowered his eyes, embarrassed. “He’s not mine. Not really.”

“We’re just friends,” Armand said. With a confidence that he perhaps did not feel, but approximated with aplomb, he climbed to his feet, dusting off his clothing with the palms of his hands. “Do you mind if we feed before we go?”

“I mind very much,” Esme said. With a motion of her hand, she beckoned one of her followers closer. It was the young one, a pretty maid of sixteen or seventeen, dressed as a boy, in broad silk trousers and a turban fitted with a green gem. “Khadija will show you to the gate. She’s a proper young lady, so don’t even think of trying anything.”

The girl flashed a smile, one that was reserved almost exclusively for Armand, and then took to the rooftops with a weightless bound. 

Armand reached back, offering Santino his hand to help him to his feet. When Santino looked back, Esme and her Djinn had already returned to the shadows of the olive trees. He could feel her watching them -- watching him as he shrugged off Armand’s outstretched hand and sprang to the rooftops.

The tomboy Khadija was waiting for them, but she did not move to follow Santino immediately. Instead, she held back until Armand had summited the rooftop, and only when she could fall into step at his side did she light out for the city wall.

Santino outpaced the two of them quickly, though he could tell that Armand was hanging back on purpose. He was aware, peripherally, of the two of them jostling each other with their elbows as they ran, giggling like children. They must have spoken to each other, whispering swift secrets, all the urgent things that must be said before the city limits put an end to their fun, but Santino could not make out a word of it.

He had been shut out of their swiftly erected private world, just as surely as he had been shut out of Baghdad. Not even half a millennia gone by, and Saydan-Ayt had already entered the realm of myth and rumor. Esme, for all her competent command of the region, had laughed at the name, as if indulging the fantasies of an imaginative child.

Santino could not imagine that the world had moved on so quickly while he had huddled in the catacombs, and yet it seemed he must now accept it. The alternative would be to doubt all that had come before, as if he had never existed outside of the catacombs. As if he had been born underground, an eyeless snake or mole, never meant to exist in the light.

The eastern gate of the city appeared before him. Santino fought the urge to look back one last time before he slipped through it. There was nothing back there, nothing worth mentioning.

Once he was outside the wall, he slowed and waited for Armand to catch up. He did a moment later, drawing up at Santino’s side. Confronted with him once more, Santino realized he could not think of a single thing to say. Not one word that would not be vulgar or pointless.

Sticking to the shadows of the buildings, he made for the open desert.


	8. Chapter 8

Santino took them as far as he could before the sky began to grow light. It would be safer, he reasoned, to put some distance between them and the Djinn before the sun came up. Esme had proven capricious in her mercy, and he did not doubt for a moment that her wrath was equally subject to powerful whims.

Armand glided silently at his heels, saying nothing, making not the slightest murmur. Santino could not imagine what he might be thinking, what uncharitable conclusion he had no doubt already drawn.

He deserved it, whatever it may be. After tonight, he was at last worthy of all the contempt Armand had heaped upon him these long years past.

They followed the river, as it curved through the surrounding farmland, stopping at last at a boatwright’s hut on the bank. The mudbrick cottage was empty and abandoned, and Santino dug down through the dirt floor to make a bed for the day. By then, the sky was slatey and gray, but a few stars still glittered on its western fringe.

“You barely made it big enough for two.”

Santino tensed; he had not known that Armand was watching him until he spoke.

“I didn’t know we were sharing.”

Armand was silent for a moment. It took Santino too long to realize that he was hurt. He had already begun to turn away when Santino managed to stammer out, “What I mean to say is, I thought you would want to be alone. After what I did…”

“Why would I want that?” Armand said. When Santino risked a glance at his face, he found it unreadable, carefully scrubbed of all emotion. “You’ve kept me practically twisted around you like ivy on a wall since we started this journey. There’s no need to change things now.”

Santino knelt without a word and scraped another few inches out of the makeshift grave, widening it enough to fit them both. As he squared off the edges of the hole he spoke without looking up from his work.

“I have no idea what to say to you, Armand. I have no idea where we go from here. I brought you here to teach you, to determine if you were ready to lead the Paris coven. I’ve managed only to put you in danger. I’m the one who is not fit to lead.”

Armand was quiet, pensive. At last, he said, “You know, we never fed tonight. It’s all right, though. You always say, fasting clears the mind. Makes the true and proper path plain. I think, Master, we could both benefit from that.”

Santino had not lifted his eyes, or moved to look around. The sun had nearly reached the eastern horizon, and he felt suddenly weary. His shoulders sagged, and his limbs grew leaden. For the first time in all his many years, he realized how easy it would be to stay like this for a beat too long, a few extra moments above ground, enough time for the dawn to overtake him.

Such morbid thoughts shamed him as soon as they were formed. He had made a grievous tactical error in coming here, but he still had responsibilities. This was no time to be indulging in self-pity and theatrics.

A hand descended on his shoulder. It was Armand, pushing and prodding him into the shallow grave. Santino laid back, his arms at his sides in an attitude of death. Armand dragged a dusty carpet over to cover the hole, then he slipped inside and rolled the frayed end over them, entombing them in darkness.

While Santino did his best to maintain the stiff immobility of a corpse, Armand immediately assumed the loose-limbed articulations of a lover. He turned over on his side, resting his head on Santino’s shoulder and flopping an arm over his waist. His breathing slowed, slowed, but Santino still fell asleep before he did.

______________

The next evening, Armand was already gone when Santino opened is eyes. His side of the grave was empty, the corner of the rug slightly askew. 

Santino found him around the back of the hut, looking back the direction they had come, to where the spires of the city were barely visible around a bend in the river. Santino knew his wistful expression at once for what it was.

“I’m sorry about your new friend,” he said.

Armand glanced back at him. Santino had expected a pout, a sullen look, but instead Armand was smiling.

“It’s all right,” he said. “We made a plan. We’re going to meet in Jerusalem in 100 years, when we don’t have so many busybodies breathing down our necks.”

“I think it’s a sound idea.”

“Of course it is,” Armand said. “But it’s a secret, so don’t go spreading it around.”

Heartened that Armand seemed to be in good spirits, Santino held out a hand to him. Armand took it, sweeping closer, his face tilted back so he could look Santino in the eye.

“Where do we go now, Master?”

“You don’t have to call me that.”

“Since when?”

“You know the answer to that. I’m ashamed, Armand--”

“Don’t,” Armand said quickly, cutting him off. “I wasn’t angry with you for what happened last night, but I’ll become very cross indeed if you keep talking like that. I didn’t tell you because I thought you knew, but I’ve been having a really good time with you. Wherever we’re going, even if it’s nowhere, I’m not about to let the local bullies ruin it for us. Besides, we’re fine, aren’t we?”

“No thanks to my inaction.”

Armand’s smile deepened, no longer a skin-deep expression of aloof amusement. What passed momentarily across his face was a well-worn look of genuine affection, one that produced a dimple in the center of one cheek. 

“Actually, I thought you were gallant.”

Santino didn’t have the blood for a proper blush, but he felt the dry capillaries in his cheeks dilate colorlessly. Armand must have intuited the change, because he stood a little taller and pressed a kiss to the corner of Santino’s mouth.

“I don’t think I’ll ever understand you,” Santino said quietly, his eyes averted. Nearly two centuries of sniping and backbiting at every opportunity, and Armand chose now of all times to become earnest and tender. 

“That’s too bad,” Armand replied. “Because I understand you.”

“Might you be persuaded to share some of that secret knowledge?”

“I might,” Armand said. “But we’re wasting the night like this. Don’t we have places to be?”

“We will go east. For as long as you are willing.”

“I’m still willing,” Armand assured him. “But I might be more able if you actually told me where we were headed.”

Santino considered refusing out of hand. He had deliberately remained tight lipped about their final destination. It was in part to cultivate a sense of mystery and ceremony, something he did as almost second nature now. But there had been another reason, too: he had wanted to see how far Armand was really willing to follow him, if he still remembered how to obey.

He could no longer ask for or expect unwavering submission, not after Armand had proven how ill-suited to it he actually was. Try as he might to play the part of the good fledgling, he had ever been anything but.

“All right,” Santino conceded. “You win, I’ll tell you everything.”

But not there, not so near to the place where it had begun. Santino led the way along the river, knowing that they would have to leave even that behind soon. Armand followed behind him, pausing occasionally to watch the boats on the water or toss a stone into the shallows. He did not seem to miss city life in the slightest, though Santino wondered if he would still be in such high spirits if he knew that Baghdad was the last true city they would see this side of India.

Once they hit the open desert and the vast dry steppe on the other side of the Tigris, they would have to move fast and light. There were still humans in those desolate and forbidding places, but they were scattered widely and at random. Still, they would manage, just as Santino had the last time he had come this way.

They came upon a pair of laborers harvesting reeds on the riverbank and descended on them swiftly, without preamble. Even Armand, who had adopted the irritating habit of playing with his food, went through the motions without much fuss. After they were finished, he even took the initiative of lugging the bodies out to the deeper water and letting them sink out of sight.

Wringing out the tails of his traveling cloak, he hopped back up on the bank. Though he was still soaked through, he slipped a delicate hand into the crook of Santino’s arm. The solicitous gesture wasn’t necessary; Santino had not forgotten his vow.

“I’m not leading you on some mad chase,” he assured Armand. “This is not a journey with no final destination. The place I am going to show you is very real, and vital to understanding what we are. The holy sites of Men are the places where Christ preached his sermons, where he lived and died. Those are of no interest to our kind. Our sacred places are all the locations where evil worked its way into this world.”

Armand laughed. “Those aren’t hard to find. We probably didn’t even have to leave home.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Santino said. “But not like this. It’s a place Saydan-Ayt heard of years ago. He had listened to the contradictory, half-confused travelers’ tales and felt he must go and get to the bottom of things. Though he told me to stay home, I insisted on tagging along. At the time, I had lived less time as a blood drinker than I had as a man, and I don’t think I had any idea how much I was slowing him down. But the was patient beyond patience, that demon.”

Half-lost in the telling, Santino did not as first realize that Armand had begun to dart curious looks from beneath his lashes. It made a knot of something cold and defensive take shape in Santino’s chest, a lump of solid ice clinging to the insides of his ribs.

“He’s real,” Santino said quietly, his gaze skating away, slipping out from beneath Armand’s skeptical eyes. “I don’t care what the Djinn say. I don’t care what you think. He’s real.”

“And if he’s not?” Armand said. “Does it matter? Whether your maker was some ancient mystery or not, does it change who you are? What you’ve managed to do? In another century or two, they’ll probably be saying that you and I are made up too. Now that would be exciting.”

Santino wanted very badly to be angry, but when he tried to access what had once seemed an unending supply of righteous fire inside him, he found the forge cold and dry. There was nothing left. 

“You’re right, of course,” Santino said. “About all of it. Saydan-Ayt is the past, and he ought to remain as the past. And yet, he saved me.” 

There, at least, was something Armand could understand, though perhaps not entirely. Even in his darkest moment, Armand had still hoped ardently, and known beyond a doubt that everything would work out. So it had, for both of them, but Santino had never lost sight of the fact that it had never been certain. 

“I was tested back then, and I was found wanting. When he took me, I had nothing to hope for, save that one day I would be dead and rewarded for my patience and obedience. But I could not even conceive of what Heaven might look like. That was when he came to me. He was a demon, and yet he showed me more mercy than any human ever had.”

Santino sighed, no longer sure if Armand was listening, no longer caring if he even heard.

“He fixed me, Armand. However long my life may be, he fixed it. That is why he must be real. Even if he’s dead, even if he hates me, even if he has forgotten. None of that matters, because once he was real, and that means that I am too.”

There was nothing left to say. Santino fell silent, his chest rising and falling at a slightly accelerated pace, as if the torrent of words that had swept out of him had taken his breath with it. He did not dare look at Armand, for he could not imagine what he might be thinking, what expression of pity or elevated contempt might be etched upon the fine lines of his lovely face.

A soft touch on the back of his hand rooted him to the spot.

“Santino,” Armand said gently. For so long, Santino had only been “master” to him, and for an instant he did not recognize the syllables of his own name. Armand, for his part, did not seem to notice any change at all. There was the barest of smiles on his lips as he said, “I believe you.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. I did not at first. It was such a strange story, what was I supposed to do? That you might have a maker like mine, only a bit older, a bit wiser. It seems a little convenient, don’t you think? But I believe you now. I don’t think it would even occur to you to make something like that up.”

“I don’t know how to take that,” Santino admitted. “As a compliment or as an insult.”

“Take it as you will,” Armand said. “But tell me about this place he found.”

Santino let his breath out in a sigh. “It took some searching before we found the spot. We had only the roughest of maps to go off of…”


	9. Chapter 9

_Western Desert  
April, 1020_

 

But find it we did, Saydan-Ayt and I. It was a low peak butted up against the Zagros mountains that divide the settled lands from the barbarian tribes beyond. Though it was not as tall as the range beyond it, we knew at once that we had found the spot. It was ringed in clouds throughout the year. Even on the clearest nights, it wore an opaque halo so that we could not see the top.

The stories that had reached us told of how it was impossible for mortals to climb, that something befell those who tried. Saydan-Ayt was not deterred by the talk, and he started up at once. I had not seen him like that before. My master had always been so cautious in all his dealings, approaching each task methodically and rigorously. 

We had all the time in the world, he used to say, though usually in the service of correcting some small error in a manuscript I was practicing. I thought of all those times he had made me recopy an entire page due to a misshapen bit of calligraphy, or rework an entire equation because I had transposed two numbers. He would never have let me rush in without forethought or planning, but that was exactly what he did as he began to climb. I had no choice but to follow.

The going was not steep, and so at first I could not imagine what had kept the mortals from the summit. Then, as we passed into that low cloud cover, there came the unmistakable smell of sulfur and brimstone. It grew more potent as we ascended, until I felt my senses overcome. I could see nothing in front or behind, and yet I could still hear my master somewhere ahead of me, and I followed him through that miasma. Ever upward, until it seemed I had gone much further than the peak would allow.

Then, all at once, seemingly with no warning at all, the fog that hung heavy over us parted. He was there, waiting for me, offering his hand to pull me up onto the ridge. We were both covered in ash, but my master seemed not to notice. He led me to the edge of a steep drop, and I saw then what the clouds had been meant to conceal. 

The peak was sheared off, plunging down into a deep fissure in the earth. The stench of brimstone was overpowering, making my head light. For some time now, the air had felt unseasonably warm, but as we drew near to the lip of the crater, the heat was all but overpowering.

It issued up from the rift in the earth, I realized. The air directly above was distorted, rippling, possessed of a metallic sheen.

Saydan-Ayt was already at the rim of the crater, bent over it and inspecting something far below. He had pulled the collar of his robe up over his nose and mouth so he would not breathe in the fumes. I could see even from a distance that they had gotten into his eyes, that his cheeks were streaked with bloody tears.

I didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see what was down there. But then I was at his side, leaning out over the empty space below, squinting through the smoke and clouds of ash.

All was dark, as if I gazed into the surface of an impossibly smooth black lake. Before my eyes, the water rose. A black blister appeared on the surface, swelling to bursting. When the surface split, it emitted first a shower of red sparks, and then a cloud of yellow sulfurous smoke. Through the crack that appeared, I saw it. Flames, impossible flames, stretching down into the depths of the earth.

I understood then, what we had found. This place had been hidden from the eyes of living men, but we, who were no longer quite alive, had been granted a glimpse of it before our time.

This could be nothing save for the doorway to Hell.

When I told Saydan-Ayt as much, he just shook his head, as if he pitied me. He told me to remember Plutarch, who had documented similar phenomena at Mr. Etna. Hell, he said, could not be discounted, but there may be something else at work.

In an instant, he had decided: he had to get closer.

He told me to stay behind on the rim, and slipped over the edge. Though I watched for as long as I could, he soon disappeared from sight in the smoke and shimmering heat. It seemed he was gone a long time, though at that moment any amount of time alone with my thoughts would have been excessive. Truthfully, it was probably just a few minutes before he appeared again, hopping lightly up onto the rim of the crater.

A crust of gray ash covered him from head to toe, cracking when he moved. He said that what we had took for a kind of fissure or natural canyon was in fact a crater. Once you were down inside it, the shape of it was very clear. It was as if something had fallen from a great height, driving deep, deep into the earth.

Below, he told me, there was only fire. Not flames, but liquid heat, like metal that had been melted down for casting.

He was bemused, pensive. Already nibbling at the edges of this new mystery. But something he said had caught my attention. It looked as if something had crashed down from above, and I knew of only one thing that it could be.

Here could only be the place that our Dark Lord landed when he was cast out of Heaven.

I saw it then, as clearly as if the fall took place before me. He descended like a beautiful star, wreathed in light as it streaked towards the earth. Where he struck, dust erupted in a great cloud. The sun turned red and cold, seeming to evince no heat at all. 

Even after all of that, he still tried to rise. But his broken legs would not hold him, and his shattered wings would not take his weight. There was nothing left but the fire that came from below the earth. It washed over him in waves, but he did not burn. He was only changed by it, reforged as something new.

Saydan-Ayt was watching me curiously. He wanted to know what I was thinking. I didn’t tell him, though. I still don’t know why I didn’t say anything.

____________________

When he was finished, Santino risked a glance at Armand, finding his expression inscrutable but not unpleasant.

“The perfect sacred site,” he said. “Or profane one, if you prefer. It is as if it was sized and made precisely for you.”

“If you like,” Santino replied. “But all is just as I described, at least as far as I remember it. And we’re going whether you like it or not. We’ve come too far now.”

“I didn’t say I wanted to turn back. But it was a lot of time and trouble to go to when it took you all of an hour to tell the whole story. You could have done that without ever leaving the catacombs.”

“You’re hopelessly material,” Santino said. “The purpose of the pilgrimage is the journey. The destination is only a place to go to. It could be anywhere.”

“Then why not somewhere closer to home?”

“You know why,” Santino said. He could feel his jaw growing tenser with each word.

Armand stifled a laugh behind his hand. He was enjoying himself, nursing the small pride inherent in having fenced Santino into a rhetorical corner. He’d won it fair and square, Santino had to admit.

“Because I wanted to be with you,” Santino said, trying without much success to hide his exasperation. “I wanted to be with you, one last time before you go to Paris.”

“Hah! I knew it!” Armand crowed. 

“You are both wonderful and terrible, Armand.” Now that he had started, it was far easier to speak of such things. Strange notions that he never even thought in so many words before: saying them aloud impressed the truth upon him. “I’ve adored you for so long that I no longer remember feeling any other way. Don’t ever forget that, and don’t ever doubt your worth.”

Though Armand had clearly been banking on just such an admission, it seemed he had not expected Santino to go so far. He seemed at first surprised by his clumsy attempt at lofty sentiment, but then his expression relaxed into contended calm.

“You’re not so bad yourself, Master. Not really. You’re handsome and you’re fair, and you have a curious strength that deflects blows that would otherwise kill. Though I suppose you don’t like hearing any of that about yourself. So how about this instead: you know just who you are and you could not be anyone else if you tried. Saydan-Ayt tried to change you, and so did Marius, and Alessandra. Once, I thought maybe I could embarrass you into being less of a handful. But for better or worse, you fought us all off. That’s something indeed.”

Santino was quiet for a while, letting the words echo in his mind. Repeating them to himself over and over again until they seemed to imprint themselves on him, making themselves an indelible part of his being. 

He wasn’t sure if he liked thinking of himself like that, as some unchanging edifice, becoming ever more obsolete and obstinate as the years wore on. And yet he knew that Armand had meant it well, and that he had spoken as honestly as he could. It was the best Santino was ever likely to get from him.

“Will you miss me when you are in Paris?” he ventured to ask, feeling as if he had bought himself something in the coin of sincerity.

“I hate to bring it up now, Master, but you do know I never agreed to go to Paris.”

Though Santino couldn’t exactly say he was glad to see Armand back to his blithe, difficult self, it did come as a relief.

“I seem to recall the conversation going differently.”

“No,” Armand said. “You told me I could have time to decide, then you dragged me out here and told me I was in training.”

“In training because you agreed to go to Paris,” Santino said sourly.

“I never agreed to anything,” Armand told him. “I just stopped arguing about it.”

“Armand, I’m warning you. You have exactly five more seconds to vex me about this before I start to get annoyed.”

“Fine,” Armand said. “Then I’ll decide…”

“Good.”

“...soon. And I’ll tell you the moment I’m sure. How is that, Master?”

“Not ideal.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But you’ll just have to get used it.” Armand shot him a sly, sidelong smile, as if it inform him that he would not tolerate any hard feelings. “Now, you said we have another desert to cross?”

“A steppe,” Santino corrected. “A dry one.” 

“There certainly are a lot of dry places around here, don’t you think? Someone should plant some trees. It's not bad to look at, I suppose. You just have to know how to look.”

Santino wondered if he intended to keep up the stream of prattle all night. He surprised himself by not minding much. It wasn’t bad to to listen to, he thought with an indulgent ironic flourish. You just had to know how to hear it.


	10. Chapter 10

Nights bled into one another, all consumed in the tireless labor of travel. The first time he had come this way, Santino had struggled to keep pace, cursing the way his clumsy feet seemed to sink deeper into the sand with each step. Bitterly envious of the way Saydan-Ayt had seemed to glide effortlessly over the dunes, and shamefully aware of the fact that he would have moved even more swiftly if Santino were not holding him up.

It was easier going this time. Five-hundred years on, Santino was invariably stronger, at least in the physical sense. That was the way of their kind, and it wasn’t his place to question it. All the same, he was suspicious of a strength that seemed unearned. He could not trust anything that he had not fought and won by stubborn force.

At least this way was easier on his legs.

Though he marvelled at the change, he was still conscious of outpacing Armand. This was not a race to discovery, after all, but rather a journey they had undertaken together. On the third day out, when he noticed Armand had begun to lag behind, Santino took him by the arm and led him up to the top of the highest dune.

Once there, he pointed out the constellations, naming each one. It was possible to find a route across the desert using only the stars, shifting and mutable as they might be from season to season, place to place. Even over time, as precession caused them to become canted over time.

In ten centuries, he explained with a smile, even the pole star would have shifted. It had happened at least once before: the earliest of their kind, those who had walked the earth in the company of dragons and fallen angels, had used Thuban to find their way, not Polaris as they did now.

“You ruin it when you say things like that,” Armand said, wrinkling his nose in distaste. “When you try to impart it with meaning beyond the pretty, helpful creatures that appear when the sun goes down. I like Lepus, and Monoceros. Why should I have to know more than that they are a rabbit and a unicorn?”

Santino frowned. “I didn’t know you felt that way. Forgive me, for offending you.”

“You didn’t.” 

Armand sighed, a theatrical expression of irritation, but one that he perhaps did not wholly mean. Once the initial display was over, he quieted and fixed Santino with a thoughtful expression. Whatever tentative channel of communication had opened up between them, he was determined to keep it flowing, resolved to take it as seriously as he could.

“I thought you were a man of faith,” he said at last, quietly and without accusation. “But here you are, talking about the the movement of the stars, the ancient past, the natural sciences. It’s a little hypocritical, wouldn’t you say?”

“I don’t see the contradiction,” Santino replied. “It seems logical to me that an orderly God would create an orderly universe. If anything doesn’t fit, it’s our kind. Such illogical agents of chaos could only have been seeded by our Dark Master.”

Armand laughed. “You’ve got everything figured out.”

“Not everything, but fate did stack the deck in my favor. Between God and the natural sciences, there must be the answers I’ve been looking for.”

Armand did not reply right away, and Santino assumed that he had grown bored again. He was prepared to let the whole matter drop, when Armand abruptly said, “Look. A bat.”

He lifted a hand languidly, up towards the night sky. “Do you see it? It’s hanging upside down. Those stars are the wings. Then there are two below them for the eyes.”

“I don’t see it.”

“Just look where I’m pointing,” Armand said, exasperated.

“That’s part of Vela.”

“No, it’s a bat. It must be one of our kind. The old pagan gods put him in the stars like they did with Orion. I wonder what he did to deserve that.”

“What makes you so sure it was something bad?”

“I’ve had so many negative influences in my life, I can’t imagine it any other way,” Armand replied, giving Santino a wry look. “I’ll figure it out. I’m sure I can think of something better than Vela.”

“Will you tell me when you do?”

Armand’s eyes narrowed. “No. I have a better idea. If I go to Paris for you, I’ll tell the coven there. Then, as long as the story is good enough, they’ll tell others. If word gets back to you, then you’ll know I’m doing my job. I’m making meaning out of thin air.”

“That’s not exactly how I would do it.”

“I know, but Paris isn’t your city.”

“It’s not yours either,” Santino reminded him. “Not yet.”

“Right,” Armand said. “I haven’t even agreed to go. I need to see this great fire of yours first. It had better be worth all the trouble. Honestly, Master, this desert gets really painfully dull after a couple of days. It’s just dunes and a cactus once in a while.”

In spite of his complaints, he bounded to his feet readily enough, dusting the sand off his clothing before reaching back to offer Santino his hand. Santino took it, and allowed Armand to haul him to his feet. 

It brought them momentarily into close proximity, so near that their bodies almost touched. Santino expected Armand to prance away, out of reach, but for a long moment he stayed where he was, his face tilted back. In the wash of moonlight, his skin had taken on the sheen of white marble, like an ingenious facsimile of his young protege. A likeness with all the suspicions and long-held resentments smoothed away.

Before he knew he was going to do it, Santino bent and kissed Armand on the mouth. To his surprise, Armand did not leap back as if from an open flame. Instead, after the first touch, he leaned closer, pushing up on his toes so he could lean against Santino’s chest. 

His fingers sank into Santino’s clothing, clutching him tightly. His grip loosening and tightening in rhythmic pulses, like the beating of a heart.

When they finally did break apart, Armand still did not relinquish his hold nor drop his gaze from Santino’s face. “You are full of surprises,” he said quietly. “How long have you been keeping that to yourself?”

“I don’t know,” Santino said. “I don’t remember.”

“Me neither,” Armand said. Haltingly, he laid the fingertip of one hand first against his own lips, and then against Santino’s. It wasn’t until Armand touched him that Santino realized his mouth was raw and sore.

“Well, Master, you’re a good kisser. I’m surprised. You wouldn’t think it from looking at you.”

Armand stood a little taller, bringing them together once more. His tongue darted out, past Santino’s lips, making a bold circuit of the inside of his mouth. This time, though, Santino eased him away.

“Let’s not lose sight of why we’re here,” he said, detecting a slight tremor in his voice when he spoke.

Armand stuck out his tongue, annoyed, though he did let Santino go and step back. “You started it.”

“I know. You looked beautiful for a moment, in this light.”

“Just for a moment?” Armand said.”And just because of the light?”

“Always,” Santino told him truthfully. “In any light. But what does that change?”

Perhaps he had not expected such an honest declaration of affection, or perhaps he had no answer to Santino’s question. Whatever the case, Armand lowered his eyes and straightened his clothing with a fastidious hand. When they set out again, he followed Santino at a distance, well out of reach.

_______________________________

 

Soon after that, Santino lost track of the days. They still headed east, more or less. During the day, the mountain range that housed the sacred crater would have shown up against the distant horizon, hazy and distorted from the heat, but undeniably there. By night, however, they had no such luck.

Though he hadn’t wanted to make such a production of it, as the nights stretched into weeks Santino began to alight amongst the mortals in the trade caravans and oasis settlements they encountered. Santino could, with some effort, befuddle the minds of men, and so he would wait until he could catch one alone before slipping out of the shadows and bespelling him.

His touch was heavy-handed, lacking in finesse. He got answers to his questions, but Santino doubted anyone who had been unlucky enough to come across him in the wilderness slept well afterwards. 

He was sorry for them, if he was being totally honest. Even more so because not one seemed to know what he was talking about when he mentioned a fiery mountain, a peak ringed in clouds that no man could penetrate. This troubled him, for he knew that in centuries past, rumors of the place had penetrated far and wide, reaching the ears of all the desert tribes and the boldest merchants who made the overland crossing. Now, though, regardless of who he asked, he came up wanting.

The demon he had been in Rome would have scorned that cautious, searching creature he had become, one who even had pity for the comforts of men. But they had come a long way from Rome. 

Armand, for his part, did not seem to mind the change. He was still gentle and solicitous in his affections: taking Santino’s hand while they traveled by night, curling up close to him while they slept during the day, though he had made no further advances of the carnal variety. Santino was relieved he didn’t seem to expect anything, but he also caught himself in the occasional resurgence of disappointment, of confusion. 

He had thought it was a perfectly serviceable kiss they had shared. Though perhaps Armand had been underwhelmed.

Still, he thought, he was in no position to complain, especially since Armand had quite handily made the transformation to pleasant travel companion. He had become stoic and uncomplaining, happy to help Santino plot their route or fan out to scout for somewhere to bed down for the day.

It made each night flow into the next, such that Santino would occasionally find himself wondering how long it had been, how long it could go on. Not forever, he knew that. Certainly not that long.

On the night of the full moon, they caught their first glimpse of the Zagros mountains. The sky was clear and bright, unbroken by even a single cloud. They could see a slight distortion on the horizon, like the shadow of teeth in a jaw. There was no telltale cloudy halo included in the profile, but Santino made for the distant peaks. He could only hope something would start to look familiar.

By the second day, the terrain was rougher, the yellowish desert grasses not so sparse. As they passed into the foothills, it was more difficult to find a safe place to bed down for the night. Santino had already begun the work of cracking through the rocky soil, hollowing out a grave deep enough that it wouldn’t shift during the day, when he heard Armand call to him.

Santino found him further up the slope, on ridge that jutted out over the surrounding plain, giving a good view of the distant peaks. The sun was rising by then, casting the mountains in sharp relief. They had not yet begun to shimmer in the heat of the day, but there was a mist rising off the peaks as the land quickly warmed.

“Master, look,” Armand said quietly. With a tip of his chin, he indicated a particular low, rounded formation.

The rising mist had encircled the peak, obscuring the very top. Though the clouds were thin, almost colorless, they were unmistakable.

Santino swallowed hard, feeling his throat click dryly. “Is that it?” he heard Armand ask.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

Armand’s eyes were on him, watching him sidelong, more curious than suspicious but still suspicious enough.

“I’m certain.”

The sun had risen another degree, and as it approached the horizon the mist atop the mountains began to burn off. Another few minutes and the cloud that now ringed the Devil’s resting place would be gone. Santino didn’t know what had happened to permanent miasma that had once protected it, but he knew that he didn’t want to see the place unceremoniously unveiled before the coming light of day.

In a fit of something that was almost panic, he took Armand’s wrist. “Come. Let’s go. We’ll make our way up in the evening.”

Armand went after him without complaint, though Santino was aware that he kept looking over his shoulder. He wasn’t sure what Armand saw; he didn’t look back even once.

They bedded down for the day, Armand curled tight against his side. As close as ever if not closer. He had found a way to fit their bodies together that left a gap scarcely wide enough for the breath of sleep to pass.


	11. Chapter 11

Santino was awake early the next evening, almost before the sun had fully set. For once, he was up before Armand, and he wasn’t so fixated on the crater that he did not pause to enjoy that.

Armand’s head was pillowed on his shoulder, his red hair fanned out over his face, over Santino’s trailing arm. Though he knew that it was impossible, and perhaps a heresy just to think it, he could not shake the feeling that Armand’s appearance had changed. No longer was he the child he had been for all those long years; somehow, he had aged. 

He had matured well, gracefully, though surely when he had been a mortal that matter would have been in doubt. All had worked out for the best, Santino had to admit, even if that too had been uncertain for a while.

Seized with an abrupt feeling of tenderness, Santino twisted around in their grave to press a kiss to the corner of Armand’s mouth. Before he could, Armand twitched in his sleep. He lifted an arm, flinging it over his face, like a sleepy child blocking out the light. He held it there a moment, and when he dropped it enough to peep out, he was smiling.

“Is it time?” he said.

“If you’re ready.”

“I am,” Armand replied, sitting up, breaking through the hard gravel crust on top of their grave. He sprang free, shaking the dirt out of his clothes and hair. “I’m excited. I wasn’t until now.”

Santino rose as well, brushing himself off. “Whether you’re excited or not, we’re going.”

“But don’t you want to know why?” Armand said. “Last night, something happened. I had a vision, like you used to.”

“Come now,” Santino said. He had never told Armand about the blessed curse that had been laid upon him as a mortal, his ability to commune with the spirits, though somehow he was not surprised that Armand knew. In truth, Santino had not had any such intervention in a long time, and he had not thought about them in years. “You had a dream.”

“No,” Armand said. “When I have dreams, they’re always about stupid things that make no sense. Or about making love. You probably think that’s stupid too, don’t you?”

“I don’t have an opinion on the matter.”

Armand stifled a giggle behind his palm. “This time, though, it wasn’t like that. I saw everything in perfect clarity. First, there was a star. It was the evening star, but not the one we know. Like you said, Santino, years ago a different star shone in the north. But this one was plucked out, violently, like some Grand Inquisitor tearing one of the features off a face. Then the star was cast down to earth. It seemed to fall so slowly, silently, as if it did not move at all. But when it hit the ground, it made plenty of noise.”

Santino was rapt. In spite of all his professed skepticism and disinterest, he was riveted to Armand’s tale.

“There was a huge explosion,” Armand went on. “Rocks were torn up from deep in the earth, and they flew everywhere. A huge cloud of smoke billowed up, and it covered the moon so it looked orange and the sun so it burned red and cold. Inside the crater, though, it was still. I saw it, just like you said, the lake of fire. But then I looked closer, and I realized that the fire was only a screen. Like a cloth pulled in front of an alcove but you can still see shadows of what’s going on behind it.”

All at once, his hand snapped out, tightening on Santino’s, squeezing it fiercely. “I saw what was on the other side. It looked like a man, but just barely. With a perfect face. A face I thought was perfect until I saw its body and how it put the face to shame. I can’t remember the details, not even what color his hair or skin were, but I know he made a mockery of every piece of art, of every one of our kind that has ever tried to mold himself into a living model of ideal beauty. It had massive wings, torn to ribbons. I could see black bones jutting out through the skin. It’s wrists were chained. The shackles were so light, so delicate, and yet I could tell that they held it, for all time.”

Santino’s throat felt dry. He swallowed hard and managed, “And then what?”

“Then I woke up,” Armand shrugged. “But what do you think? Was it just a dream.”

“It might be a dream.”

“And if it’s not?”

“Then you will have surpassed me in every way,” Santino admitted. “You will have uncovered the truth I never could.”

“I didn’t want to do that.” For a moment, Armand seemed genuinely contrite. He lifted their joined hands and pressed a kiss to Santino’s wrist. “Let’s go see. It may be nothing. But if it’s something, what should we do? I think I’m going to let him go…”

He set off, and for the first time Santino found himself lagging behind. The crater was cast in sharp relief against the night sky; Santino could see its edges clearly delineated. There was no sulphurous cloud, nor was there a glow that betrayed the fire within. Though perhaps it was as Armand had said, and those things were merely screens that obscured the truth. There was much he might have missed the first time around.

It was still only late evening when they reached the top. The last few hundred feet of the ascent was much steeper, almost vertical. Armand huffed a bit at having to exert himself in such an undignified way, but he made the climb quickly, hopping from outcropping to outcropping, finding handholds in the small cracks that lined the slope.

Santino was close on his heels, but Armand hauled himself up on the ridge a few seconds before him. Santino had enough time to see him step forward, almost to the edge of the crater, and then stop.

He was still standing there, perfectly still, when Santino caught up to him. His toes were up against the edge, where the ground dropped away dramatically before him. 

Something was terribly wrong; it was not at all as he remembered.

Vanished was the lake of fire, the crown of sulfur and brimstone smoke. Inside the crater was dark, and cold. 

Santino came up to Armand’s side. Armand did not look up at him; he only said quietly, “Is this it?”

For a long time, Santino didn’t answer. Armand just waited, not moving at all, until Santino at last managed to choke out, “It’s all gone.”

Armand scowled, not irritated in the slightest, only thoughtful. “I’m going to look closer,” he declared, and before Santino could move, he had slipped over the edge of the crater and out of sight.

Santino’s body was slow to react, but when he got himself moving he followed in Armand’s footsteps, over the edge of the crater and into the darkness below.

He dropped down the incline. Armand was crouched down, his hand trailing over the hard rock floor. It was smooth, jet black, like a dark mirror beneath their feet. As he explored, his fingers skated over a broken piece of stone. The face of the fracture was smooth, but the edge was razor sharp. Armand jerked his hand away, and a moment later Santino detected the pungent, coppery odor of blood.

Armand straightened up, sucking on his cut finger. “It’s just like that, as far as the eye can see. What do we do now, Master?”

Santino didn’t answer, could not answer. He had no idea where they went from here. They had come all this way; he had hung all his hopes on Armand. All that awaited them was a barren wasteland, a sea of cold black glass. 

Nothing was here for them.

“Santino?” Armand sighed. “What’s gotten into you? You look pale.”

He latched onto Santino’s arm, propping him up. “Come, let’s go. I don’t think this place agrees with you.”

With Santino in tow, Armand marched them back to the crater wall and fairly dragged Santino up to the ridge. Wound up and pointed in the right direction, Santino moved like a well-oiled automaton, but once he was out of the crater his legs abruptly gave out, dropping him to his knees.

Armand stood over him for a moment, then crouched down at his side. “Master, come now.”

“It’s all gone,” Santino said. “I’ve come all this way and there’s nothing left.”

“ _We_ came all this way,” Armand informed him. “You said yourself that the pilgrimage is about the journey, not the destination.”

“And yet…”

“And yet, you were hoping you would get here and everything would be clear. All the answers would be waiting for you.” When Santino did not look at him, Armand reached out to him, touching the tangle of hair that fell across his brow. “That’s all you were hoping for, weren’t you?”

Santino drew in a shuddering breath. “You know me too well.”

“Only because you wear your heart on your sleeve,” Armand replied with a smile. “But in truth, I had hoped too. There were those things Marius used to say to me, about some great secret, some responsibility we had to the founders of our kind. Before you start peppering me with questions, know that he never told me much. And I never asked.”

Armand seemed somewhat irritated at the prospect of being totally honest, unprotected by his habitual armor of wry irony. But he pressed on gamely.

“And yet, as I traveled with you, the most curious thing happened. I started to think, what if it is them? What if your demon is the same as Those Who Must be Kept? What if, somehow, your truth and Marius’ and even Saydan-Ayt’s were all the same, just a matter of interpretation?”

“I don’t know,” Santino admitted.

“I’ll go to Paris,” Armand said suddenly, then he laughed. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, I’d like it.”

“Well, I’m not just doing it for you,” Armand said gently. “But I think I understand a little better now. Now, come along, let’s get off this mountain.”

Armand grabbed him by the hand and began to pull at him. Santino followed him, and though he did his best not to look back, just before they began to descend he risked a glance over his shoulder. No bolt came to strike him blind, not tremor through the earth to turn him into a pillar of salt.

Just the barren crater, stretching for as far as he could see. He had left something of himself here, assuming it would be well taken care of. It was lost now, along with everything else from the past. 

It would do no good to seek it elsewhere, for it was long gone.


	12. Chapter 12

_Night Island  
May, 1989_

When, after so many milenia, all those torrid secrets of their geneology had come to light, the last thing Santino wanted to admit was that he was disappointed. A thousand years ago, perhaps even a hundred, things might have been different, but he was older now, if not wiser, and when Akasha was dead and all said and done, he was glad to have some peace and quiet again.

Which was not to say that quiet was easy to come by, not with the patchwork coven that had descended on Armand’s mansion, seemingly determined to buy up every ridiculous electronic toy they could get their hands on and then run them all at once.

They all somehow managed to make room for one another, and Santino didn’t want to be known as the only one who couldn’t make it work. Still, as the days following Akasha’s death turned into weeks, certain facts were beginning to emerge, ones he was having a hard time ignoring.

He didn’t belong here. Indeed, he may not even have been welcome.

It wasn’t that he was without powerful allies, ones that shielded him from even Marius’ seething, but even after everything they had been through together, Santino knew he did not count among their intimates. 

Very soon now, Santino had come to realize, he would move on. He would go back out into the world, blighted though it may have been by Akasha’s rampage across the globe, and he would see where their kind stood. There must have been others who had survived, and they were out there now. Wondering if things could be better, worse, anything at all.

He didn’t know what he would say to them, but he supposed he would think of something.

It was almost midnight when Santino made his way back from the mainland. He was nearly a mile out when he started to hear the racket coming from inside the coven house, and he braced himself against it. Whatever it was, he told himself, he would act interested. Agreeable. It was the way of the world now.

But as he came up the wooden walk that led from the beach up to the mansion, a shadowy figure uncoupled itself from the wall and came down to meet him. A boxy suit made him look larger than he was, and the swagger in his walk made him seem younger than his innumerable years. But more than that, he was the last person Santino had expected to see, and that was why it took him so long to realize that it was Armand.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Armand said. “You certainly took your time.”

“I didn’t know I was expected.”

Santino regarded him cautiously. Armand had barely spoken to him since Santino had arrived. Ever the charming and attentive host while he had guests in the mansion, he had scarcely bothered to show Santino where the linens were kept before retreating beyond his reach. That he didn’t want to talk was understandable, but it seemed there was more to it than that.

Armand had been avoiding him, that much was clear. Santino could not say that he entirely blamed him. His former protege had grown cosmopolitan and modern; surely those old superstitious days embarrassed him.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Armand said. He boosted himself up on a glass tile wall lining the path. His feet were clear of the ground and he swung them boyishly. “If you’re not to busy.”

“I’m never too busy for you. But won’t your guests miss you?”

“The Sega Genesis I ordered finally came,” Armand said with a sly grin. “They’re completely enraptured by it. That, at least, should buy us some time.”

He reached out, taking hold of the lapels of Santino’s suit. With a practiced hand, he smoothed them down. 

“You’re always in black, Santino.” He moved on to the knot of his tie, straightening it. “Haven’t you heard of a pop of color? You’re scaring Daniel, you know.”

“I’m sorry.”

Armand shrugged. “Spiders scare Daniel. Pigeons scare Daniel. Even now, I mean. Since I changed him.”

“Is Daniel your first?”

“Yes, I suppose,” Armand said. “It’s silly, isn’t it? But I like him a lot. For the longest time, I thought I’d never do it. There was so much responsibility. You have to commit for such a long time if you want them to turn out halfway viable. I never had the patience, though maybe you did. Why did you never make another?”

Santino paused to consider it. “I really don’t know. Maybe now I will. There are so few of us left.”

“You’d remake our kind in your own image?” Armand smiled. “That would be delightful indeed. You would make them so cross.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, then. I’m through making enemies. Now, tell me what you wanted to talk to me about.”

“I will,” Armand said. He presented his cheek. “Just as soon as you kiss me.”

Santino brushed his lips over Armand’s skin, a cursory touch. “What’s all this about?”

“I’ve been thinking about your mouth since you arrived,” Armand said with a toss of his hair. “Do I need any more reason than that?”

He leaned back, scrutinizing Santino’s face. “Is it Marius you’re worried about? Let me tell you something about that: The imitable Marius could have come and claimed me any time he so chose. He didn’t, and so I have no intention of crawling back to him now. He’s got a lot of apologizing to do. I even said that to him.”

“Did you?”

“Not yet. But I will. At the moment, I’m talking to you.”

“And I’m listening,” Santino said. He really was, but Armand abruptly fell silent, as if he had run all out of words.

At last he said, quietly, “I stayed in Paris for a long time. Long after you left Rome.”

“I’m sorry,” Santino said. “Truly. Did you suffer there?”

“No,” Armand replied. “I had a perfectly lovely time, in fact. I wish you’d have come to see one of our performances, though.”

“I meant to,” Santino said. “I had heard so much of your art, and I thought I would have all the time in the world. But then you were gone.”

“I wasn’t gone. I came here. Maybe it was silly, I was chasing after someone. What about you? Any great loves?”

“Nothing like that.”

“That figures,” Armand said with a roll of his eyes. “You should get out more, Santino.”

“I’m fine as I am.”

“I mean, you really should get out more. Why not start now? I have something I want to check. You can come with me. We’ll take my plane.”

“You have a plane?” Santino asked.

“Practically everyone has a plane anymore,” Armand said. “You see? This is what I’m talking about. If you’d actually go out and talk to people maybe you’d find some answers to your questions.”

“What questions are those?”

“You tell me,” Armand said with a shrug. He hopped down from the wall, catching hold of Santino’s hand. “Come. Quickly now, before those busybodies notice we’re gone. I thought the new game would hold them, but I can never be sure. Their reflexes are so fast, they can beat anything in a few hours. Even Battletoads.”

Santino wasn’t sure what they were going, but he realized he didn’t mind terribly. He let Armand lead him to whatever destination he might have in mind for them.

________________

It was just the two of them on Armand’s private jet, along with a pilot who knew the better part of discretion. Santino allowed himself to be shown around, acting appropriately impressed at the chromed surfaces and recessed screens. 

Armand took him into the bedroom in the back of the fuselage, a windowless room that locked from the inside. There was only one bed, and when Armand informed him that they would just have to share, Santino felt he was being watched very closely to see if he showed signs of being scandalized. Feeling that the only scandal was that Armand slept in a waterbed with satin sheets, he hinted that he would have been much more comfortable in a coffin.

“Really?” Armand said. “Louis slept in his coffin for far too long, if you ask me. It’s like a grown man holding on to his childhood racecar bed.”

“Tell me about Louis.”

“Louis is boring,” Armand said instantly. “He’s nobody.”

Though his gaze skated away as he spoke, Santino let the matter drop. Soon, Armand was back at his side, cozying up as he said, “You haven’t even asked where we are going.”

“I thought you wanted to keep it a secret.”

“I do, but you’re still supposed to ask.”

Armand sat down on the edge of the bed. His gaze remained fixed on his hands for a long moment, until at last he looked up. “I think you should ask. There’s still time to turn around and go back, and when you find out you might want to. I really don’t know, Santino. I don’t want you to be mad, but it seems like you’re mad a lot these days.”

“I’m not mad.” Santino sighed, and came to sit beside him. He put his arm around Armand. “I’m just afraid that I have come to the end of my usefulness. I can accept even that, I think, given time.”

“Just because you’re not the coven master you once were doesn’t mean you’re not useful. Well, maybe it does. But it doesn’t mean I don’t want you around.”

When Santino didn’t answer right away, Armand cuddled against his shoulder. “You should at least meet Louis.”

“I thought you didn’t like Louis.”

“I don’t, but you two would get along. And if you don’t, we can talk about how dreadful he is together.”

In spite of his best efforts, Santino felt his protective instincts aroused. “Was he really so cruel to you?”

“He was so bad. And then he told everyone about it, without any thought as to what I might have to say about it. He loves to act refined, but he’s really a mean thoughtless person. What is it that it says in the book? He smashes things up and then retreats back into his money and affectations.”

“I’m not familiar,” Santino admitted.

“It doesn’t matter. I have more money than him now anyway, so he doesn’t even have that as an excuse.” 

Armand laughed, but it sounded like a hiss of pain. All at once, he looked up into Santino’s eyes with a serious and piercing gaze.

“I was really upset, though. He really hurt me.”

“I know.” Santino sighed. He had not expected Armand to come to allow himself to be so vulnerable and earnest, and Santino surprised himself be being glad that he had. Even after everything, Armand trusted him, at least with this. “Do you want me to do something about it? To him, I mean.”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” Armand said. “You’d be in trouble if you did. Besides, I’ll handle Louis. I gave him such a terrible room in the house, with no view at all. Then, when he asked me for a quiet place that he could go to observe and contemplate, I sent him to Daytona. He’s been thoroughly chastised. Now, let’s forget about stupid Louis. Are you sure you don’t want to ask me where we are going?”

With some effort, Santino managed to suppress his annoyance. “Where are we going?”

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly spoil the surprise.”

“Armand!”

“Fine, fine,” Armand said. “I’ll tell you, but you still have to go. We don’t have enough fuel to turn back.”

“Why would I want to turn back?”

“You won’t,” Armand said. “It’s going to be fine. We’re going somewhere we’ve been before, after all. That sacred site, the place of pilgrimage. You remember it, don’t you?”

Santino remembered it well, but he was surprised that Armand did. That disastrous and anticlimactic journey all those centuries ago, it had served no purpose save to convince Armand to walk out of his life and to make Santino realize too late how much of a mistake it had been to let him.

“I thought of it often,” Armand said, as if he had heard Santino’s thoughts. “I think it’s clear to both of us now what we were really dealing with. So much for myth and superstition.”

“Those days were already coming to an end, even back then,” Santino replied. “I’ve read the literature since then, and I know that what we saw was a volcanic vent. One that either burned itself out or blew itself into oblivion between the first time I visited it and the second. What’s the point of going back now? I don’t need to confirm that I was simple and credulous back then.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” Armand said, pouting. “I just thought of it, and I wanted to see it again. Don’t you?”

Santino opened his mouth to respond before he realized that he didn’t have an answer to that question. He could not imagine that place where he had once hung all his hopes of enlightenment would even be recognizable any longer. He wasn’t sure he wanted to face it again, not when he knew that all it had once represented had been washed away by the unrelenting tides of time.

When he didn’t say anything right away, Armand spoke again.

“Do you remember Khadija? I never did meet her in Jerusalem. It seemed I waited forever for the appointed time, but then it arrived and it passed me by so swiftly I hardly even noticed. I wonder if she’s all right. After what Akasha did, I mean.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Santino assured him, knowing that he could not really mean it. “Those old covens build their members to last. They know how to go to ground.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that.” Armand smiled. “We really were completely head over heels for each other, for a whole half of an hour, half a millennia ago. I’m starting to think that’s the way all the best romances are. Sudden and violent, and so short that you don’t have time to learn any of each other’s flaws.”

“Then I apologize, for our long acquaintance,” Santino said wryly.

“That’s all right.” Armand’s eyes had narrowed into sly slits. “You and I don’t have any flaws.”

He straightened up abruptly, and then darted in close to press a kiss to the corner of Santino’s mouth. Then he sprang up from the bed and began to fiddle with the big multi-disc CD player bolted to one of the shelves.

“Let me play some music for you. It’s band Daniel likes. They’re called Sonic Youth, and you’re going to hate them when you first hear them. But you have to learn to like them. Daniel says the electronic stuff isn’t going to last. This is what everyone is going to be listening to soon. I have no intention of being left behind again. From now on, I’m only living for what’s to come.”


	13. Chapter 13

It was close to dawn when they touched down on an airstrip outside Kirkuk. Armand’s reliable pilot took care of everything, sequestering the plane in a hangar, dimming the lights, and then leaving to grease whatever palms were required to keep their presence in the country quiet, secure, and discreet. 

“You can sleep in the back with me,” Armand said. “But if you still miss your coffin, there might be room in the cargo hold.”

“I’ll stay with you.”

Santino trailed him into the back room, where Armand did up the many intricate locks in the inside of the door. He stepped back, and without turning around lifted both hands to his collar. His fingers made a series of swift, mysterious movements behind the screen of his body, and before Santino realized what was happening, he had shed his shirt, tossing it over the back of a chair.

As he stepped forward, toeing out of his leather loafers, Santino lost track of all else. Armand began to unbutton his jeans, allowing them to slip low on his hips. When he glanced up and caught a glimpse of the look on Santino’s face before he could turn away, he smiled as if at a private joke.

“It’s going to get hot when the sun comes up. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll join me.”

With that, he slipped out of his jeans and then crawled into bed. Santino watched him make a great show of fluffing the pillows and smoothing the sheets. He could not shake the feeling that Armand was conspiring to make an utter fool of him one last time.

There was no helping it; he would always be a fool where his protege was concerned.

Loosening his tie and his cuffs, Santino climbed into bed. Armand rose at once to meet him, wrapping his arms around Santino’s neck.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” he murmured against Santino’s ear, his fingers already unfastening buttons and catches, ridding Santino of all his mortal vestments. His hands were hard at work inside his clothes, everywhere. Until the sun broke the horizon and froze them where they lay.

__________________

They didn’t talk about what had happened. When night came, Armand sprang out of bed, seemingly much refreshed. He bounded around the small chamber, gathering up their clothes. Tossing Santino his and slinging his own over his arm.

There was a sheen of bloody sweat at his hairline, leftover from the sweltering heat of the day. Frowning at his reflection he wiped it away.

“I’m definitely going somewhere cool after this. Maybe Norway.”

“They have 18 hours of night,” Santino replied, busying himself getting dressed under the covers. “You’d be exhausted.”

“Perhaps,” Armand conceded.

“I’m sure you’re a terror when you’re tired.”

Armand laughed softly. “Perhaps,” he said again.

Once they were both dressed, Armand hustled them out into the night. The airstrip was outside the city; though they could see the lights of Kirkuk in the distance, they were far from civilization. They made a quick meal of a pair of National Guard troops patrolling the front gate, though Armand drew the line at killing them. They were protecting his plane, after all. When it was done, Armand led the way out into the desert.

“I have the satellite data this time,” Armand informed him. “I know exactly where we’re going.”

Good to his word, he led them across the desert. The sands seemed greener than Santino remembered, the once rolling dunes anchored in place by the myriad small roots of the scrub brush and desert grasses. It was no mystery, no explosion of manna in the desert, but rather a simple engineering project. Humans introduced invasive and resilient plants to harden the topsoil and cut down on blowing dust storms.

In time, they caught sight of the mountains in the distance. The volcano that had once loomed so large in Santino’s imagination stood out in front, seeming to thrust its bulk forward, like the figurehead on the prow of a ship.

Even in the darkness, he could make out the dusting of clouds that ringed the peak. Not thick and sulfur-yellow like they had been the first time he had passed this way, but the full and heavy thunderheads that portended rain. As they started up the slope, the temperature fell off quickly, cooled by a storm front coming off the mountains.

The first fat drops of rain had begun to fall by the time they reached the top. It was impossible to see down into the crater until they were nearly on top of it, and it was not until his toes were right up against the ledge that Santino realized what he was looking at far below him.

A green forest spread out in all directions, an explosion of verdant growth that filled every inch of the crater. Thick canopies of trees reached nearly to the rim, completely obscuring the floor far below.

Armand was beside him, hugging himself against the chill in the air. His breath came in great steaming clouds as he said, “I think I see; I think I understand. This basin catches all the runoff from the mountains, and the last of the rainfall that burns off before it reaches the desert. It all pools here, which is why it’s so different. So alive.”

In a sudden fit of delight, he seized Santino’s hand. “I can’t believe it. You were right all this time. It really is a sacred place. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Santino did not reply; perhaps he could not have replied even if he had known what to say. He had come expecting a wasteland, or a lake of fire, but what he had found was surely Eden. A paradise, cut off from the rest of the world, hidden away inside a crater.

As Armand tugged him down the slope, he had a half-manic thought, that the life in this forest had been isolated from the outside world. It had developed for centuries, separate from the barren desert, the unforgiving mountains. Alone in its private paradise, who could say what new creatures might have been born in that time.

They passed beneath the upper canopy of leaves. The branches had grown so wide in places that they touched the rock slopes that surrounded them, and Santino had to push them aside carefully so they could descend. The crater floor had the spongy, overgrown quality of a rainforest, though all the places were light might penetrate between the trees was packed with tall thin grasses, like reeds, bearing a striking resemblance to the desert grasses outside, but somehow different. Subtly changed by their contact with the new environment.

Birds with long, trailing tail feathers and jeweled frogs the size of a man’s palm watched them from the trees. A huge tortoise with a shell of white and black peered at them from the grass. It did not shrink into its shell when they came close, seeming to have no fear at all of humans.

Even when Armand knelt beside it, running the tip of one finger around its mottled plates, the creature only craned its neck to look at him in quiet patience. It was completely tame, having never before encountered people and all their destructive tendencies.

“I want one,” Armand said. “Do you think it would mind if I brought it home?”

“I don’t think anything good could come from that. Taking it away from here and back to all that.”

Armand pushed to his feet, turning back to face him.

“What are you thinking?” Armand said. “Are you disappointed again? I didn’t bring you here for that, I swear.”

“I’m not disappointed,” Santino told him. “I’m amazed. I never thought that a place like this could exist. Not here. It’s as if it’s been waiting, all this time.”

“Waiting for us?” Armand shook his head. “I hope not. I almost didn’t come. It was just a whim.”

“Do you have those often?”

“Whims? I suppose so. I’m not very consistent, when I think about it. I suppose it’s a flaw, but at least I have you. Steady enough for both of us.”

“You can just say boring, if that’s what you mean.”

“A little boring,” Armand admitted. “But honestly I don’t see what’s wrong with that. Maybe we should all try to be a little more boring.”

“Now I feel that you are just patronizing me.”

Armand just smiled at him before turning on his heels. “I think I hear running water. Let’s go take a look.”

Without waiting for a response, he turned and stepped into the forest. The foliage was so heavy he vanished in an instant, and Santino had to track him by sound, deeper into the green, past those strange bright birds and beasts that stood sentinel the trees. Unafraid, unblinking. They were not dazed or sleepy in the slightest, and he knew he had not awakened them. 

Everything down here was nocturnal. Awake at night, retreating into the many dark hollows of the forest during the day.

Santino broke through the line of trees and into a small clearing around a spring. The water bubbled up from the ground, black and murky. But way down in the depths, at the very edge of where the light could penetrate, Santino could see quick silvery flashes. Bright little fish with bioluminescent scales darted in an out of sight in an instant.

“I don’t think we can tell anyone about this place,” Armand said quietly.

Santino glanced over at him, surprised by the melancholy look on his face. “You’re right. No one has been here in a long time. Maybe never.”

“If they did come, they’d only ruin it. Lestat can’t even keep a bed made. Do you know what he would do to a place like this?”

Santino reached over and took his hand. “You know I won’t tell anyone, right?”

At that, Armand seemed to relax. He even smiled a bit, timidly, as he said, “Do you remember that night we looked at the stars? I told you I would make a myth, and I would place it in the heavens for you.”

“I remember,” Santino replied. “I listened where I could, but I never heard the story.”

“I don’t think it got around,” Armand said. “It never quite caught on. But it went like this, I think. Once upon a time, a star fell from the sky. When it landed, a human woman saw it and got curious. As she came near to the spot where she had seen it fall, a light washed over her. She wasn’t hurt, and she didn’t feel any different. But soon after that, she found out that she was pregnant.”

Armand had made himself comfortable on the long grass. He slipped off his shoes and dipped his feet in the water.

“The months passed, and the woman gave birth. It was a boy, and he looked like the most beautiful tiny human ever. That’s how I told it, at least. I don’t think babies are very cute. This one was, though. He was perfect in every way, except that sticking out from his back were two leathery wings. They were small at first, like stubs, but as he grew they grew with him, until they were longer than his body was tall. Oh, and another thing was strange. This baby couldn’t stand to be out in the daylight. His mother understood, and so she kept him inside, only venturing out when the sun was down. And so, he grew up having never seen the sunlight at all.”

“The perfect blood drinker,” Santino surmised. “One untainted by ever having lived a human life.”

“He was perfect,” Armand replied. “Although perhaps not exactly a blood drinker. Because as that boy grew up, he met our kind, and he met humans too. And he tried everything he could think of, but he knew he didn’t belong with either. So one day he unfurled his great leathery wings and he ascended. Back into the stars, where he belonged. The end.”

“It’s a lovely story,” Santino said. “It’s a shame it went unappreciated.”

“Maybe I could have tried harder. But in a way I didn’t want to. Part of me just wanted to keep it all to myself.”

Armand shifted closer, resting his head on Santino’s shoulder. “Let’s stay here tonight. Look, we can crawl in under the roots of the trees. The sun won’t be able to reach us. We’ll be safe, won’t we?”

“Yes,” Santino said. “I’m sure we will.”

Together they made themselves a very snug, dry little room. They slipped inside, and though Santino’s hands and Armand’s smart little mouth were far from chaste, it was not like it had been the night before.

In the last moments before dawn, they lay close together. And as they waited for the sun to rise, Santino had a vision. 

He saw deep into the heart of the virgin forest, deeper than either of them would or could dare to go. The animals grew stranger, more delicate, more beautiful. Moths with cut-out wings, like patterns in lace. Timid rodents with fur the color of dust and massive black eyes. Lizards that could change color at will, but that always came to rest on the same shade of fiery red, the same as Armand’s hair.

And then, at the center of it all, a creature fashioned in the shape of a vampire but not a vampire at all. Untouched by the dark spirit Amel, that tawdry echo of their true form. It spoke to him then, spoke without words. Telling him of all their kind who had passed, and then of all who yet lived. 

Santino saw them, as if they stood before him: The wreck of the Paris coven, crawling out of sewer that had sheltered them. Esme and the Djinn of Baghdad, sending out their scouts to tally the losses in the region. There were others too, so many that he did not know. The Saint Petersburg vampires who had ridden out the storm in the subway, ancient aristocrats and newly-made fledglings alike, sheltering amidst the marble and crystal. The tiny, self-regulating covens of Aukland and La Rikonada and the Sandwich Islands that were only now hearing of the disaster in ripples and rumors.

And then, more faintly, for he was the most remote of them all, he saw Saydan-Ayt. His old master, scarcely aware of the massacre he had escaped, scarcely aware that time had passed at all. He was still hard at work on his great labor, the one that would set them all free. When the time was right, he would return, but not a moment before.

Santino had never imagined there could be so many of their kind, that they would be so different. But they were united in one thing: they would want to know the truth one day. Santino understood that it was no longer his place to tell it. Lestat had slipped so effortlessly into the role of prophet and messiah that there was no room left for any deviation from the accepted doctrine.

Let him tell it all, for it would comfort the afflicted to hear. They deserved to know where they came from, even the least of them. In time, there would be no more secrets between them.


End file.
